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THE 

SICK -A- BED LADY 

AND ALSO 

HICKORY DOCK, THE VERY TIRED GIRL, 
THE HAPPY-DAY, THE RUNAWAY ROAD, 
SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED IN 
OCTOBER, THE AMATEUR LOVER, 

HEART OF THE CITY, THE PINK 
SASH, WOMAN’S ONLY 
BUSINESS 


BY 

ELEANOR HALLOWELL ABBOTT 

Author of “Molly Make-Believe” 


WlustrateO 



NEW YORK 
THE CENTURY CO. 
1912 

3 



Copyright, 1911, by 

The Century Co. 

Copyright, 1905, 1907, by P. F. Collier & Son 
Copyright, 1905, by J. B. Lippincott Company 
Copyright, 1906, 1907, 1908, 1909, 1910, by The Ridgway Company 
Copyright, 1910, by The Success Company 


Published, October, ign 



TO 

THE MEMORY OF 
TWO FATHERS 





CONTENTS 


PAGE 

The Sick-a-Bed Lady 3 

Hickory Dock 33 

The Very Tired Girl 57 

The Happy-Day 89 

The Runaway Road 127 

Something that Happened in October ... 161 

The Amateur Lover 195 

Heart of the City 253 

The Pink Sash 291 

Woman’s Only Business 331 







I 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


“ That will help you remember where your mouth 


is” Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

With no other object, except to get home .... 58 

The blue ocean was the most wonderful thing of all . 96 

Instinctively she clasped it to her 146 

The four of us who remained huddled very close 

around the fire 164 

“ Hello, all you animals!” she cried 244 

The lone, accentuated figure of a boy violinist . . 256 

“Is — a — pink — sash — exactly a — a— passion?” . . 298 

“Oh, I wish I had a sister,” fretted the boy . . . 364 

















THE SICK-A-BED LADY 






















U 



























4 












I 





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I 


THE SICK-A-BED LADY 



HE Sick-A-Bed Lady lived in a 
huge old-fashioned mahogany bed- 
stead, with solid silk sheets, and 
three great squashy silk pillows 
edged with fluffy ruffles. On a 
table beside the Sick-A-Bed Lady 
was a tiny little, shiny little bell that tinkled ex- 
actly like silver raindrops on a golden roof, and all 
around this Lady and this Bedstead and this Bell 
was a big, square, shadowy room with a smutty 
fireplace, four small paned windows, and a chintzy 
wall-paper showered profusely with high-handled 
baskets of lavender flowers over which strange 
green birds hovered languidly. 


The Sick-A-Bed Lady, herself, was as old as 
twenty, but she did not look more than fifteen with 
her little wistful white face against the creamy pil- 
lows and her soft brown hair braided in two thick 
pigtails and tied with great pink bows behind each 
ear. 


3 



THE SICK-A-BED LADY 

When the Sick-A-Bed Lady felt like sitting up 
high against her pillows' she could look out across 
the footboard through her opposite window. Now 
through that opposite window was a marvelous vista 
— an old-fashioned garden, millions of miles of 
ocean, and then — France! And when the wind 
was in just the right direction there was a perfectly 
wonderful smell to be smelled — part of it was Cin- 
namon Pink and part of it was Salt-Sea-Weed, but 
most of it, of course, was — France. There were 
days and days, too, when any one with sense could 
feel that the waves beat perkily against the shore 
with a very strong French accent, and that all one’s 
French verbs, particularly “ J’ dime, Tu dimes, II 
dime ” were coming home to rest. What else was 
there to think about in bed but funny things like 
that? 

It was the Old Doctor who had brought the Sick- 
A-Bed Lady to the big white house at the edge of 
the Ocean, and placed her in the cool, quaint room 
with its front windows quizzing dreamily out to sea, 
and its side windows cuddled close to the curving 
village street. It was a long, tiresome, dangerous 
journey, and the Sick-A-Bed Lady in feverish fancy 
had moaned : “ I shall die, I shall die, I shall die/' 
every step of the way, but, after all, it was the Old 
Doctor who did the dying! Just like a snap of the 
finger he went at the end of two weeks, and the 
4 


THE SICK-A-BED LADY 


Sick-A-Bed Lady rallied to the shock with a plain- 
tive : “ Seems to me he was in an awful hurry,” 

and fell back on her soft bed into days of uncon- 
sciousness that were broken only by riotous visions 
day and night of an old man rushing frantically up 
to a great white throne yelling: “ One, two, three, 
for Myself ! ” 

Out of this trouble the Sick-A-Bed Lady woke 
one day to find herself quite alone and quite alive. 
She had often felt alone before, but it was a long 
time since she had felt alive. The world seemed 
very pleasant. The flowers on the wall-paper were 
still unwilted, and the green paper birds hung airily 
without fatigue. The room was full of the most 
enticing odor of cinnamon pinks, and by raising her- 
self up in bed the merest trifle she could get a smell 
of good salt, a smell which somehow you could n’t 
get unless you actually saw the Ocean, but just as 
she was laboriously tugging herself up an atom 
higher, trying to find the teeniest, weeniest sniff of 
France, everything went suddenly black and silver 
before her eyes, and she fell down, down, down, 
as much as forty miles into Nothing At All. 

When she woke up again all limp and wappsy 
there was a Young Man’s Face on the Footboard 
of the bed; just an isolated, unconnected sort of 
face that might have blossomed from the footboard, 
or might have been merely a mirage on the horizon. 

5 


THE SICK-A-BED LADY 


Whatever it was, though, it kept sta. ig at her fix- 
edly, balancing itself all the while most perfectly 
on its chin. It was a funny sight, and while the 
Sick-A-Bed Lady was puckering her forehead try- 
ing to think out what it all meant the Young Man’s 
Face smiled at her and said “Boo!” and the Sick- 
A-Bed Lady tiptilted her chin weakly and said 
— “ Boo yourself! ” Then the Sick-A-Bed Lady 
fell into her fearful stupor again, and the Young 
Man’s Face ran home as fast as it could to 
tell its Best Friend that the Sick-A-Bed Lady had 
spoken her first sane word for five weeks. He 
thought it was a splendid victory, but when he tried 
to explain it to his friend, he found that “ Boo 
yourself!” seemed a fatuous proof of so startling 
a truth, and was obliged to compromise with con- 
siderable dignity on the statement: “ Well, of 
course, it was n’t so much what she said as the way 
she said it.” 

For days and days that followed, the Sick-A-Bed 
Lady was conscious of nothing except the Young 
Man’s Face on the footboard of the bed. It never 
seemed to wabble, it never seemed to waver, but just 
stayed there perfectly balanced on the point of its 
chin, watching her gravely with its blue, blue eyes. 
There was a cleft in its chin, too, that you could 
have stroked with your finger if — you could have. 
Of course, there were some times when she went to 
# 6 


THE SICK-A-BED LADY 


sleep, and soFikl times when she just seemed to go 
dut like a candle, but whenever she came back from 
anything there was always the Young Man’s Face 
for comfort. 

The _ Sick-A-Bed Lady was so sick that she 
thought all over her body instead of in her head, 
so that it was very hard to concentrate any particu- 
lar thought in her mouth, but at last one afternoon 
with a mighty struggle she opened her half -closed 
eyes, looked right in the Young Man’s Face and 
said : “ Got any arms ? ” 

The Young Man’s Face nodded perfectly politely, 
and smiled as he raised two strong, lean hands to 
the edge of the footboard, and hunched his shoul- 
ders obligingly across the sky line. 

“ How do you feel ? ” he asked very gently. 

Then the Sick-A-Bed Lady knew at once that it 
was the Young Doctor, and wondered why she 
had n’t thought of it before. 

“ Am I pretty sick? ” she whispered deferentially. 

“Yes — I think you are very pretty — sick,” said 
the Young Doctor, and he towered up to a terrible, 
leggy height and laughed joyously, though there was 
almost no sound to his laugh. Then he went over 
to the window and began to jingle small bottles, and 
the Sick-A-Bed Lady lay and watched him furtively 
and thought about his compliment, and wondered 
why when she wanted to smile and say “ Thank 
7 


THE SICK-A-BED LADY 


you ” her mouth should shut tight and her left foot 
wiggle, instead. 

When the Young Doctor had finished jingling 
bottles, he came and sat down beside her and fed her 
something wet out of a cool spoon, which she swal- 
lowed and swallowed and swallowed, feeling all the 
while like a very sick brown-eyed dog that could n’t 
wag anything but the far-away tip of its tail. When 
she got through swallowing she wanted very much 
to stand up and make a low bow, but instead she 
touched the warm little end of her tongue to the 
Young Doctor’s hand. After that, though, for 
quite a few minutes her brain felt clean and tidy, 
and she talked quite pleasantly to the Young Doc- 
tor : “ Have you got any bones in your arms ? ” she 
asked wistfully. 

“ Why, yes, indeed,” said the Young Doctor, 
“ rather more than the usual number of bones. 
Why?” 

“ I ’d give my life,” said the Sick-A-Bed Lady, 
“ if there were bones in my silky pillows.” She 
faltered a moment and then continued bravely: 
“ Would you mind — holding me up stiff and strong 
for a second ? There ’s no bottom to my bed, 
there ’s no top to my brain, and if I can’t find a hard 
edge to something I shall topple right off the earth. 
So would you mind holding me like an edge for a 
moment — that is — if there's no lady to care? 

8 


THE SICK-A-BED LADY 


I ’m not a little girl,” she added conscientiously — 
“ I ’m twenty years old.” 

So the Young Doctor slipped over gently behind 
her and lifted her limp form up into the lean, solid 
curve of his arm and shoulder. It was n’t exactly 
a sumptuous corner like silken pillows, but it felt as 
glad as the first rock you strike on a life-swim for 
shore, and the Sick-A-Bed Lady dropped right off 
to sleep sitting bolt upright, wondering vaguely how 
she happened to have two hearts, one that fluttered 
in the usual place, and one that pounded rather 
noisily in her back somewhere between her shoulder- 
blades. 

On his way home that day the Young Doctor 
stopped for a long while at his Best Friend’s house 
to discuss some curious features of the Case. 

“ Anything new turned up ? ” asked the Best 
Friend. 

“ Nothing,” said the Young Doctor, pulling mood- 
ily at his cigar. 

“ Well, it certainly beats me,” exclaimed the Best 
Friend, “ how any long-headed, shrewd old fellow 
like the Old Doctor could have brought a raving 
fever patient here and installed her in his own house 
under that clumsy Old Housekeeper without once 
mentioning to any one who the girl was, or where 
to communicate with her people. Great Heavens, 
the Old Doctor knew what a poor ‘ risk ’ he was. 
9 


THE SICK-A-BED LADY 


He knew absolutely that that heart of his would 
burst some day like a firecracker.” 

“ The Old Doctor never was very communica- 
tive,” mused the Young Doctor, with a slight 
grimace that might have suggested professional 
memories not strictly pleasant. “ But I ’ll surely 
never forget him as long as ether exists,” he added 
whimsically. “ Why, you ’d have thought the old 
chap invented ether — you ’d have thought he ate it, 
drank it, bathed in it. I hope the smell of my pro- 
fession will never be the only part of it I ’m willing 
to share.” 

“ That ’s all right,” said the Best Friend, “ that ’s 
all right. If he wanted to go off every Winter to 
the States and work in the Hospitals, and come back 
every Spring smelling like a Surgical Ward, with a 
lot of wonderful information which he kept to him- 
self, why, that was his own business. He was a 
plucky old fellow anyway to go at all. But what 
I ’m kicking at is his wicked carelessness in bringing 
this young girl here in a critical illness without 
taking a single soul into his confidence. Here he ’s 
dead and buried for weeks, and the Girl’s people are 
probably worrying themselves crazy about not hear- 
ing from her. But why don’t they write ? Why in 
thunder don’t they write?” 

“ Don’t ask me! ” cried the Young Doctor nerv- 
ously. “ I don’t know ! I don’t know anything 
io 


THE SICK-A-BED LADY 


about it. Why, I don’t even know whether the 
Girl is going to live. I don’t even know whether 
she ’ll ever be sane again. How can I stop to quiz 
about her name and her home, when, perhaps, her 
whole life and reason rests in my foolish hands that 
have never done anything yet much more vital than 
usher a perfectly willing baby into life, or tinker 
with croup in some chunky throat ? There ’s only 
one thing in the case that I ’m sure of, and that is 
that she does n’t know herself who she is, and the 
effort to remember might snap her utterly. She ’s 
just a thread. 

“ I have an idea — ” the Young Doctor shook his 
shoulders as though to shake off his more somber 
thoughts — “ I have an idea that the Old Doctor 
rather counted on building up a sort of informal 
sanitarium here. He was daft, you know, about 
the climate on this particular stretch of coast. You 
remember that he brought home some athlete last 
Summer — pretty bad case of breakdown, too, but 
the Old Doctor cured him like a magician ; and the 
Spring before that there was a little lad with epi- 
lepsy, was n’t there ? The Old Doctor let me look 
at him once just to tease me. And before that — I 
can count up half-a-dozen people of that sort, peo- 
ple whom you would have said were ‘ gone-ers,’ too. 
Oh, the Old Doctor would have brought home a 
dead man to cure if any one had ‘ stumped ’ him. 
ii 


THE SICK-A-BED LADY 


And I guess this present case was a ‘ stump 5 fast 
enough. Why, she was raging like a prairie fire 
when they brought her here. No other man would 
have dared to travel. And they put her down in a 
great silk bed like a fairy-story, and the Old Doctor 
sat and watched her night and day studying her 
like a fiend, and she got better after a while: not 
keen, you know, but funny like a child, cooing and 
crooning over her pretty room, and tickled to pieces 
with the ocean, and vain as a kitten over her pink 
ribbons — the Old Doctor would n’t let them cut 
her hair — and everything went on like that, till in 
a horrid flash the Old Doctor dropped dead that 
morning at the breakfast table, the little girl went 
loony again, and every possible clew to her identity 
was wiped off the earth ! ” 

“ No baggage?” suggested the Best Friend. 

“Why, of course, there was baggage!” the 
Young Doctor exclaimed, “ a great trunk. Have n’t 
the Housekeeper and I rummaged and rummaged it 
till I can feel the tickle of lace across my wrists even 
in my sleep ? Why, man alive ! she ’s a rich girl. 
There never were such clothes in our town before. 
She ’s no free hospital pauper whom the Old Doc- 
tor obligingly took off their hands. That is, I don’t 
see how she can be! 

“ Oh, well,” he continued bitterly, “ everybody in 
town calls her just the Sick-A-Bed Lady, and pretty 
12 


THE SICK-A-BED LADY 


soon it will be the Death-Bed Lady, and then it will 
be the Dead-and-Buried Lady — and that ’s all we ’ll 
ever know about it.” He shivered clammily as he 
finished and reached for a scorching glass of whisky 
on the table. 

But the Young Doctor did not feel so lugubrious 
the next day and the next and the next, when he 
found the Sick-A-Bed Lady rallying slowly but 
surely to the skill of his head and hands. To be 
frank, she still lay for hours at a time in a sort of 
gentle daze watching the world go by without her, 
but little by little her body strengthened as a wilted 
flower freshens in water, and little by little she 
struggled harder for words that even then did not 
always match her thoughts. 

The village continued to speculate about her lost 
identity, but the Young Doctor seemed to worry 
less and less about it as time went on. If the sweet- 
est little girl you ever saw knew perfectly whom 
you meant when you said “ Dear,” what was the use 
of hunting up such prosy names as May or Alice? 
And as to. her funny speeches, was there any- 
thing in the world more piquant than to be called a 
“ beautiful horse,” when she meant a “ kind doc- 
tor ” ? Was there anything dearer than her absurd 
wrath over her blunders, or the way she shook her 
head like an angry little heifer, when she occasion- 
ally forgot altogether how to talk? It was at one 
13 


THE SICK-A-BED LADY 


of these latter times that the Young Doctor, watch- 
ing her desperate struggle to focus her speech, for- 
got all about her twenty years and stooped down 
suddenly and kissed her square on her mouth. 

“ There,” he laughed, “ that will help you remem- 
ber where your mouth is ! ” But it was astonishing 
after that how many times he had to remind her. 

He couldn’t help loving her. No man could 
have helped loving her. She was so little and dear 
and gentle and — lost. 

The Sick-A-Bed Lady herself did n’t know who 
she was, but she would have perished with fright if 
she had realized that no one in the village, and not 
even the Young Doctor himself, could guess her 
identity. 

The Young Doctor knew everything else in the 
world ; why should n’t he know who she was ? He 
knew all about France being directly opposite the 
house ; he had known it ever since he was a boy, and 
had been glad about it. He stopped her trying to 
count the green birds on the wall-paper because he 
“ knew positively ” that there were four hundred 
and seventeen whole birds, and nineteen half birds 
cut off by the wainscoting. He never laughed at 
her when she slid down the side of her bed by the 
village street window, and went to sleep with her 
curly head pillowed on the hard, white sill. He 
never laughed, because he understood perfectly that 
14 


THE SICK-A-BED LADY 


if you hung one white arm down over the sidewalk 
when you went to sleep, sometimes little children 
would come and put flowers in your hand, or, more 
wonderful still, perhaps, a yellow collie dog would 
come and lick your fingers. 

Nothing could surprise the Young Doctor. 
Sometimes the Sick-A-Bed Lady took thoughts she 
did have and mixed them up with thoughts she 
did n’t have, and sprung them on the poor Young 
Doctor, but he always said, “ Why, of course ” as 
simply as possible. 

But more than all the other wise things he knew 
was the wise one about smelly things. He knew 
that when you were very, very, very sick, nothing 
pleased you so much as nice, smelly things. He 
brought wild strawberries, for instance, not so much 
to eat as to smell, but when he was n’t looking she 
gobbled them down as fast as she could. And he 
brought her all kinds of flowers, one or two at a 
time, and seemed so disappointed when she just 
sniffed them and smiled ; but one day he brought her 
a spray of yellow jasmine, and she snatched it up 
and kissed it and cried “Home” and the Young Doc- 
tor was so pleased that he wrote it right down in a 
little book and ran away to study up something. 
He let her smell the fresh green bank-notes in his 
pocketbook. Oh, they were good to smell, and 
after a while she said “ Shops.” He brought her 
15 


THE SICK-A-BED LADY 


a tiny phial of gasoline from his neighbor’s auto- 
mobile, and she crinkled up her nose in disgust and 
called it “ gloves ” and slapped it playfully out of 
his hand. But when he brought her his riding-coat 
she rubbed her cheek against it and whispered some 
funny chirruppy things. His pipe, though, was the 
most confusing symbol of all. It was his best pipe, 
too, and she snuggled it up to her nose and cried 
“You, y-o-u!” and hid it under her pillow and 
would n’t give it back to him, and though he tried 
her a dozen times about it, she never acknowledged 
any association except that joyous, “ Y-o-u!” 

So day by day she gained in consecutive thought 
till at last she grew so reasonable as to ask : “ Why 

do you call me Dear f ” 

And the Young Doctor forgot all about his earli- 
est reason and answered perfectly simply : “ Be- 

cause I love you.” 

Then some of the evenings grew to be almost 
sweetheart evenings, though the Sick-A-Bed Lady’s 
fragile childishness keyed the Young Doctor into an 
almost uncanny tenderness and restraint. 

Those were wonderful evenings, though, after the 
Sick-A-Bed Lady began to get better and better. 
A good deal of the Young Doctor’s practice was 
scattered up and down the coast, and after the dust 
and sweat and glare and rumble of his long day he 
would come back to the sleepy village in the early 
16 


THE SICK-A-BED LADY 


evening, plunge for a freshening swim into the salt 
water, don his white clothes and saunter round to 
the quaint old house at the edge of the ocean. Here 
in the breezy kitchen he often sat for as long as an 
hour, talking with the Old Housekeeper, till the 
Sick-A-Bed Lady’s tiny silver bell rang out with 
absurd peremptoriness. Then for as much time as 
seemed wise he went and sat with the Sick-A-Bed 
Lady. 

One night, one full-moon night, he came back 
from his day’s work extraordinarily tired and fret- 
ted after a series of strident experiences, and hur- 
ried to the old house as to a veritable Haven of 
Refuge. The Housekeeper was busy with village 
company, so he postponed her report and went at 
once to the Sick-A-Bed Lady’s room. 

Only fools lit lights on such a night as that, and 
he threw himself down in the big chair by the bed- 
side, and fairly basked in peacefulness and moon- 
light and content, while the Sick-A-Bed Lady leaned 
over and stroked his hair with her little white fin- 
gers, crooning some pleasant, childish thing about 
“ nice, smoky Boy.” There was no fret or fuss 
or even sound in the room, except the drowsy mur- 
mur of voices in the Garden, and the churky splash 
of little waves against the shore. 

“ Hear the French Verbs,” said the Sick-A-Bed 
Lady, at last, with deliberate mischief. Then she 
2 1 7 


THE SICK-A-BED LADY 


shut her lips tight and waved her hands distractedly 
after a manner she had when she wished to imply 
that she was suddenly stricken dumb. The Young 
Doctor laughed and reached over and kissed her. 

“ J’ dime,” he said. 

“ J’ dime,” the Sick-A-Bed Lady repeated. 

" Tu dimes ” he persisted. 

“ Tu dimes ” she echoed on his lips. 

— Then — “ There ’ll be no * he loves ’ to our 
story,” he cried suddenly, and caught her so fiercely 
to his breast that she gave a little quick gasp of pain 
and struggled back on her pillows, and the Young 
Doctor jumped up in bitter, stinging contrition and 
strode out of the room. Just across the threshold 
he met the Old Housekeeper with a clattering tray 
of dishes. 

“ I’m going down to the Library to smoke,” he 
said huskily to her. “ Come there when you ’ve 
finished. I want to talk with you.” 

His thoughts of himself were not kind as he wan- 
dered into the library and settled down in the first 
big chair that struck his fancy. 

Then he fell to wondering whether there was any- 
thing gross about his love, because it took no heed 
of mental qualifications. He thought of at least 
three houses in the village where that very night he 
would have found lights and laughter and clever 
talk, and the prodding sympathy of earnest women 
18 


THE SICK-A-BED LADY 


who made the sternest happening of the day seem 
nothing more than a dress rehearsal for the even- 
ing’s narration of it. Then he thought again of 
the big, quiet room upstairs, with its unquestioning 
peace and love and restfulness and content. What 
was the best thing after all that a woman could 
bring to a man? Yet a year ago he had bragged of 
the blatant braininess of his best woman friend! 
He began to laugh at himself. 

Slowly the incongruities of the whole situation 
bore in upon him, and he sat and smoked and smiled 
in moody silence, staring with skeptical interest at 
the dimly lighted room around him. It was cer- 
tainly the Old Doctor’s private study, and realiza- 
tion of just what that meant came over him iron- 
ically. 

The Old Doctor had been very stingy with his 
house and his books and his knowledge and his pa- 
tients. It was natural perhaps under the profes- 
sional circumstances of waning Age and waxing 
Youth. Yet the fact remained. Never before in 
five years of village association had the Young Doc- 
tor crossed the threshold of the Old Doctor’s home, 
yet now he came and went like the Man of the 
House. Here he sat at this instant in the Old Doc- 
tor’s private study, in the Old Doctor’s chair, his 
feet upon the Old Doctor’s table, and the whole 
great room with its tier after tier of bookcases, and 
19 


THE SICK-A-BED LADY 


its drawer after drawer of probable memoranda 
free before him. He could imagine the Old Doc- 
tor’s impotent wrath over such a contingency, yet 
he felt no sentimental mawkishness over his own 
position. As far as he knew the Dead were dead. 

Sitting there in the Old Doctor’s study, he con- 
jured up scene after scene of the Old Doctor’s irasci- 
bility and exclusiveness. Even as late as the Sick- 
A-Bed Lady’s arrival, the Old Doctor had snubbed 
him unmercifully before a crowd of people. It was 
at the station when the little sick stranger was being 
taken off the car and put into a carriage, and the 
Old Doctor had hailed the Younger with unwonted 
friendliness. 

“ I ’ve got a case in there that would make you 
famous if you could master it,” he said. 

The Young Doctor remembered perfectly how he 
had walked into the trap. 

“What is it?” he had cried eagerly. 

“ That ’s none of your business,” chuckled the 
Old Doctor, and drove away with all the platform 
loafers shouting with delight. 

Well, it seemed to be the Young Doctor’s business 
now, and he got up, turned the lamp higher and be- 
gan to hunt through the Old Doctor’s rarest books 
for some light on certain curious developments in 
the Sick-A-Bed Lady’s case. 

He was just in the midst of this hunt when the 
20 


THE SICK-A-BED LADY 


Old Housekeeper glided in like a ghost and startled 
him. 

“ Sit down,” he said absent-mindedly, and went 
on with his reading. He had almost forgotten her 
presence when she coughed and said : “ Excuse me, 
sir, but I ’ve something very special to say to you.” 

The Young Doctor looked up in surprise and saw 
that the Woman’s face was ashy white. 

“I — don’t — think — you quite — understand 
the case,” she stammered. “ I think the little lady 
upstairs is going to be a Mother ! ” 

The Young Doctor put his hand up to his face, 
and his face felt like parchment. He put his hand 
down to the book again, and the book cover quiv- 
ered like flesh. 

“ What do you m-e-a-n ? ” he asked. 

“ I ’ll tell you what I mean,” said the Old House- 
keeper, and led him back to the sick room. 

Two hours later the Young Doctor staggered into 
his Best Friend’s house clutching a sheet of letter 
paper in his hand. His shoulders dragged as though 
under a pack, and every trace of boyishness was 
wrung like a rag out of his face. 

“ For Heaven’s sake, what ’s the matter? ” cried 
his friend, starting up. 

“ Nothing,” muttered the Young Doctor, “ except 
the Sick-A-Bed Lady.” 

“ When did she die ? What happened ? ” 

21 


THE SICK-A-BED LADY 


The Young Doctor made a gesture of dissent and 
crawled into a chair and began to fumble with the 
paper in his hand. Then he shivered and stared his 
Best Friend straight in the face. 

“ You might say,” he stammered, “ that I have 
just heard from the Sick-A-Bed Lady’s Hus- 
band — ” he choked at the word, and his Friend sat 
up with astonishment : “ You heard me say I had 

heard from the Sick-A-Bed Lady’s Husband?” he 
persisted. “ You heard me say it, mind you. You 
heard me say that her Husband is sick in Japan — 
detained indefinitely — so we are afraid he won’t 
get here in time for her confinement — ” 

The sweat broke out in great drops on his fore- 
head, and his hand that held the sheet of paper 
shook like a hand that has strained its muscles with 
heavy weights. 

The Best Friend took a scathing glance at the 
scribbled words on the paper and laughed mirth- 
lessly. 

" You ’re a good fool,” he said, “ a good fool, 
and I ’ll publish your blessed lie to the whole stupid 
village, if that ’s what you want.” 

But the Young Doctor sat oblivious with his head 
in his hands, muttering: “Blind fool, blind fool, 
how could I have been such a blind fool ? ” 

“What is it to you?” asked his Best Friend ab- 
ruptly. 


22 


THE SICK-A-BED LADY 


The Young Doctor jumped to his feet and squared 
his shoulders. 

“ It ’s this to me,” he cried, “ that I wanted her 
for my own! I could have cured her. I tell you 
I could . have cured her. I wanted her for my 
own ! ” 

“ She ’s only a waif,” said the Best Friend 
tersely. 

“ Waif? ” cried the Young Doctor, “waif? No 
woman whom I love is a waif ! " His face blazed 
furiously. “ The woman I love — that little gentle 
girl — a waif ? — without a home ? — I would 
make a cool home for her out of Hell itself, if it 
was necessary! Damn, damn, damn the brute that 
deserted her, but home is all around her now ! Do 
I think the Old Doctor guessed about it? N-o! 
Nobody could have guessed about it. Nobody could 
have known about it much before this. You say 
again she is n’t anybody's? I ’ll prove to you as 
soon as it ’s decent that she ’s mine?' 

His Best Friend took him by the shoulder and 
shook him roughly. 

“ It is no time,” he said, “ for you to be courting 
a woman.” 

“ I ’ll court my Sweetheart when and where I 
choose ! ” the Young Doctor answered defiantly, and 
left the house. 

The night seemed a thousand miles long to him, 
23 


THE SICK-A-BED LADY 


but when he slept at last and woke again, the air 
was fresh and hopeful with a new day. He dressed 
quickly and hurried off to the scene of last night’s 
tragedy, where he found the Old Housekeeper argu- 
ing in the doorway with a small boy. She turned to 
the Doctor complacently. “ He ’s begging for the 
postage stamp off the Japanese letter,” she ex- 
claimed, “ and I ’m just telling him I sent it to my 
Sister’s boy in Montreal.” 

There was no slightest trace of self-consciousness 
in her manner, and the Young Doctor could not 
help but smile as he beckoned her into the house and 
shut the dodL 

Then, “ Have you told her ? ” he asked eagerly. 

The Old Housekeeper humped her shoulders 
against the door and folded her arms sumptuously. 
“ No, I have n’t told her,” she said, “ and I ’m not 
going to. I don’t dar’st! I help you out about 
your business same as I helped the Old Doctor out 
about his business. That ’s all right. That ’s as it 
should be. And I ’ll go skipping up those stairs to 
tell the little lady any highfaluting, pleasant yarn 
that you can invent, but I don’t budge one single 
step to tell that poor, innocent, loony Lamb — the 
truth. It is n’t ugliness, Doctor. I have n’t got the 
strength, that ’s all ! ” 

Just then the little silver bell tinkled, and the Doc- 
tor went heavily up the few steps that swung the 
24 


THE SICK-A-BED LADY 


Sick-A-Bed Lady’s room just out of line of real up- 
stairs or downstairs. 

The Sick-A-Bed Lady was lying in glorious state, 
arrayed in a wonderful pale green kimono with 
shimmering silver birds on it. 

“ You stayed too long downstairs,” she asserted 
and went on trying to cut out pictures from a maga- 
zine. 

The Young Doctor stood at the window looking 
out to sea as long as his legs would hold him, and 
then he came back and sat down on the edge of the 
bed. 

“ What ’s your name, Honey ? ” he asked with a 
forced smile. 

“ Why, * Dear,’ of course,” she answered and 
dropped her scissors in surprise. 

“ What ’s my name ? ” he continued, fencing for 
time. 

“ Just r Boy / ” she said with sweet, contented pos- 
itiveness. 

The Young Doctor shivered and got up and 
started to leave the room, but at the threshold he 
stopped resolutely and came back and sat down 
again. 

This time he took his Mother’s wedding ring from 
his little finger and twirled it with apparent aim- 
lessness in his hands. 

Its glint caught the Sick-A-Bed Lady’s eye, and 
25 


THE SICK-A-BED LADY 


she took it daintily in her fingers and examined it 
carefully. Then, as though it recalled some vague 
memory, she crinkled up her forehead and started 
to get out of bed. The Young Doctor watched her 
with agonized interest. She went direct to her bu- 
reau and began to search diligently through all the 
drawers, but when she reached the lower drawer 
and found some bright-colored ribbons she forgot 
her original quest, whatever it was, and brought all 
the ribbons back to bed with her. 

The Young Doctor started to leave her again, this 
time with a little gesture which she took to be anger, 
but he had not gone further than the head of the 
stairs before she called him back in a voice that was 
startlingly mature and reasonable. 

“ Oh, Boy, come back,” she cried. “ I ’ll be good. 
What do you want ? ” 

The Young Doctor came doubtfully. 

“ Do you understand me to-day? ” he asked in a 
voice that sent an ominous chill to her heart. “ Can 
you think pretty clearly to-day ? ” 

She nodded her head. “ Yes,” she answered ; 
“ it ’s a good day.” 

“ Do you know what marriage is ? ” he asked ab- 
ruptly. 

“ Oh, yes,” she said, but her face clouded percep- 
tibly. 

Then he took her in his arms and told her plainly, 
26 


THE SICK-A-BED LADY 


brutally, clumsily, without preface, without com- 
ment : “ Honey, you are going to have a child. ,, 

For a second her mind wavered before him. He 
could actually see the totter in her eyes, and braced 
himself for the final hopeless crash, but suddenly 
all her being focused to the realization of his words, 
and she pushed at him with her hands and cried: 
“ No — No — Oh, my God — n-o ! ” and fainted 
in his arms. 

When she woke up again the little-girl look was 
all gone from her face, and though the Young Doc- 
tor smiled and smiled and smiled, he could not smile 
it back again. She just lay and watched him ques- 
tioningly. 

“ Sweetheart/' he whispered at last, “ do you re- 
member what I told you ? ” 

“ Yes,” she answered gravely, “ I remember that, 
but I don’t remember what it means. Is it all right ? 
Is it all right to you ? ” 

“ Yes,” said the Young Doctor, “ it ’s — all — 
right to — me.” 

Then the Sick-A-Bed Lady turned her little face 
wearily away on her pillow and went back to those 
dreams of hers which no one could fathom. 

For all the dragging weeks and months that fol- 
lowed she lay in her bed or groped her way round 
her room in a sort of timid stupor. Whenever the 
Young Doctor was there she clung to him desper- 
27 


THE SICK-A-BED LADY 


ately and seemed to find her only comfort in his 
presence, but when she talked to him it was babbling 
talk of things and places he could not understand. 
All the village feared for the imminent tragedy in 
the great white house, and mourned the pathetic ab- 
sence of the young husband, and the Young Doctor 
went his sorrowful way cursing that other “ boy ” 
who had wrought this final disaster on a girl’s life. 

But when the Sick-A-Bed Lady’s hour of trial 
came and some one held the merciful cone of ether 
to her face, the Sick-A-Bed Lady took one deep, 
heedless breath, then gave suddenly a great gasp, 
snatched the cone from her face, struggled up and 
stretched out her arms and cried, “ Boy — Boy ! ” 

The Young Doctor came running to her and saw 
that her eyes were big and startled and sharp with 
terror : 

“Oh, Boy — Boy” she cried, “the Ether! — I 
remember everything now — I — was his wife — 
the Old Doctor’s Wife!” 

The Young Doctor tried to replace the cone, but 
she beat at him furiously with her hands, crying : 

“ No, No, No ! — If you give me Ether I shall die 
thinking of him! — Oh, no! — n-o !” 

The Young Doctor’s face was like chalk. His 
knees shook under him. 

“ My God ! ” he said, “ what can I give you ! ” 

The Sick-A-Bed Lady looked up at him and 
28 


THE SICK-A-BED LADY 

smiled a tortured, gallant smile. “ Give me some- 
thing to keep me here,” she gasped ! “ Give me a 

token of you! Give me your little briarwood pipe 
to smell — and give it to me — quickly ! ” 


29 









HICKORY DOCK 


HICKORY DOCK 


HIS is the story of Hickory Dock, 
and of a Man and a Girl who 
trifled with Time. 

Hickory Dock was a clock, and, 
of course, the Man, being a man, 
called it a clock, but the Girl, 
being a girl,’ called it a Hickory Dock for no more 
legitimate reason than that once upon a time 

“ Hickory, Dickory, Dock, 

A Mouse ran up the Clock.” 

— Girls are funny things. 

The Man and the Girl were very busy collecting 
a Home — in one room. They were just as poor as 
Art and Music could make them, but poverty does 
not matter much to lovers. The Man had collected 
the Girl, a wee diamond ring, a big Morris chair, 
two or three green and rose rugs, a shiny chafing- 
dish, and various incidentals. The Girl was no less 
discriminating. She had accumulated the Man, a 
Bagdad couch-cover, half-a-dozen pictures, a huge 
gilt mirror, three or four bits of fine china and sil- 

Used by permission of Lippincott' s Magazine. 

33 



3 


HICKORY DOCK 


ver, and a fair-sized boxful of lace and ruffles that 
idled under the couch until the Wedding-Day. The 
room was strikingly homelike, masculinely homelike, 
in all its features, but it was by no means home — 
yet. No place is home until two people have latch- 
keys. The Girl wore her key ostentatiously on a 
long, fine chain round her neck, but its mate hung 
high and dusty on a brass hook over the fireplace, 
and the sight of it teased the Man more than any- 
thing else that had ever happened to him in his life. 
The Girl was easily mistress of the situation, but 
the Man, you see, was not yet Master. 

It was tacitly understood that if the Wedding- 
Day ever arrived, the Girl should slip the extra key 
into her husband’s hand the very first second that 
the Minister closed his eyes for the blessing. She 
would have chosen to do this openly in exchange 
for her ring, but the Man contended that it might 
not be legal to be married with a latch-key — some 
ministers are so particular. It was a joke, anyway 
— everything except the Wedding-Day itself. 
Meanwhile Hickory Dock kept track of the passing 
hours. 

When the Man first brought Hickory Dock to the 
Girl, in a mysteriously pulsating tissue-paper pack- 
age, the Girl pretended at once that she thought it 
was a dynamite bomb, and dropped it precipitously 
on the table and sought immediate refuge in the 
34 


HICKORY DOCK 


Man’s arms, from which propitious haven she ven- 
tured forth at last and picked up the package gin- 
gerly, and rubbed her cheek against it — after the 
manner of girls with bombs. Then she began to tug 
at the string and tear at the paper. 

“ Why, it ’s a Hickory Dock ! ” she exclaimed 
with delight, — “ a real, live Hickory Dock ! ” and 
brandished the gift on high to the imminent peril of 
time and chance, and then fled back to the Man’s 
arms with no excuse whatsoever. She was a bold 
little lover. 

“ But it ’s a c-l-o-c-k” remonstrated the Man with 
whimsical impatience. He had spent half his 
month’s earnings on the gift. “ Why can’t you call 
it a clock ? Why can’t you ever call things by their 
right names ? ” 

Then the Girl dimpled and blushed and burrowed 
her head in his shoulder, and whispered humbly, 
“ Right name ? Right names ? Call things by their 
right names? Would you rather I called you by 
your right name — Mr. James Herbert Humphrey 
Jason?” 

That settled the matter — settled it so hard that 
the Girl had to whisper the Man’s wrong name 
seven times in his ear before he was satisfied. No 
man is practical about everything. 

There are a good many things to do when you are 
in love, but the Girl did not mean that the Art of 
35 


HICKORY DOCK 


Conversation should be altogether lost, so she 
plunged for a topic. 

“ I think it was beautiful of you to give me a 
Hickory Dock,” she ventured at last 

The Man shifted a trifle uneasily and laughed. 
“ I thought perhaps it would please you,” he stam- 
mered. “ You see, now I have given you all my 
time” 

The Girl chuckled with amused delight. “ Yes 
— all your time. And it ’s nice to have a Hickory 
Dock that says “Till he comes! Till he comes! 
Till he comes ! ” 

“Till he comes to — stay” persisted the Man. 
There was no sparkle in his sentiment. He said 
things very plainly, but his words drove the Girl 
across the room to the window with her face flam- 
ing. He jumped and followed her, and caught her 
almost roughly by the shoulder and turned her 
round. 

“ Rosalie, Rosalie,” he demanded, “ will you love 
me till the end of time?” There was no gallantry 
in his face but a great, dogged persistency that 
frightened the Girl into a flippant answer. She 
brushed her fluff of hair across his face and strug- 
gled away from him. 

“ I will love you,” she teased, “ until — the clock 
stops.” 

Then the Man burst out laughing, suddenly and 

36 


HICKORY DOCK 


unexpectedly, like a boy, and romped her back again 
across the room, and snatched up the clock and stole 
away the key. 

“ Hickory Dock shall never stop ! ” he cried tri- 
umphantly. “ I will wind it till I die. And no one 
else must ever meddle with it.” 

“But suppose you forget?” the Girl suggested 
half wistfully. 

“ I shall never forget,” said the Man. “ I will 
wind Hickory Dock every week as long as I live. I 
p-r-o-m-i-s-e ! ” His lips shut almost defiantly. 

“ But it is n’t fair,” the Girl insisted. “ It is n’t 
fair for me to let you make such a long promise. 
You — might — stop — loving me.” Her eyes 
filled quickly with tears. “ Promise me just for 
one year,” — she stamped her foot, — “ I won’t take 
any other promise.” 

So, half provoked and half amused, the Man 
bound himself then and there for the paltry term of 
a year. But to fulfil his own sincerity and serious- 
ness he took the clock and stopped it for a moment 
that he might start it up again with the Girl close in 
his arms. A half- frightened, half-willing captive, 
she stood in her prison and looked with furtive eyes 
into the little, potential face of Hickory Dock. 

“You — and I — for — all time ” whispered the 
Man solemnly as he started the little mechanism 
throbbing once more on its way, and he stooped 
37 


HICKORY DOCK 


down to seal the pledge with a kiss, but once more 
the significance of his word and act startled the 
Girl, and she clutched at the clock and ran across the 
room with it, and set it down very hard on her desk 
beside the Man’s picture. Then, half ashamed of 
her flight, she stooped down suddenly and patted 
the little, ticking surface of ebony and glass and 
silver. 

“ It ’s a wonderful little Hickory Dock,” she 
mused softly. “ I never saw one just like it be- 
fore.” 

The Man hesitated for a second and drew his 
mouth into a funny twist. “ I don’t believe there is 
another one like it in all the world,” he acknowl- 
edged, half laughingly, — “ that is, not just like it. 
I ’ve had it fixed so that it won’t strike eleven. 
I ’m utterly tired of having you say ‘ There ! it ’s 
eleven o’clock and you ’ve got to go home.’ Now, 
after ten o’clock nothing can strike till twelve, and 
that gives me two whole hours to use my own judg- 
ment in.” 

The Girl took one eager step towards him, when 
suddenly over the city roofs and across the square 
came the hateful, strident chime of midnight. Mid- 
night? Midnight f The Girl rushed frantically to 
her closet and pulled the Man’s coat out from among 
her fluffy dresses and thrust it into his hands, and 
he fled distractedly for his train without “ Good-by.” 

38 


HICKORY DOCK 


That was the trouble with having a lover who 
lived so far away and was so busy that he could 
come only one evening a week. Long as you could 
make that one evening, something always got 
crowded out. If you made love, there was no time 
to talk.' If you talked, there was no time to make 
love. If^ou spent a great time in greetings, it cur- 
tailed your good-by. If you began your good-by 
any earlier, why, it cut your evening right in two. 
So the Girl sat and sulked a sad little while over 
the general misery of the situation, until at last, to 
comfort herself with the only means at hand, she 
went over to the closet and opened the door just 
wide enough to stick her nose in and sniff ecstatic- 
ally. 

“ Oh ! O — h ! ” she crooned. “ O — h ! What 
a nice, smoky smell.” 

Then she took Hickory Dock and went to bed. 
This method of bunking was nice for her, but it 
played sad havoc with Hickory Dock, who lay on 
his back and whizzed and whirred and spun around 
at such a rate that when morning came he was min- 
utes and hours, not to say days, ahead of time. 

This gain in time seemed rather an advantage to 
the Girl. She felt that it was a good omen and 
must in some manner hasten the Wedding-Day, but 
when she confided the same to the Man at his next 
visit he viewed the fact with righteous scorn, though 
39 


HICKORY DOCK 


the fancy itself pleased him mightily. The Girl 
learned that night, however, to eschew Hickory 
Dock as a rag doll. She did not learn this, though, 
through any particular solicitude for Hickory Dock, 
but rather because she had to stand by respectfully 
a whole precious hour and watch the Man’s lean, 
clever fingers tinker with the little, jeweled mechan- 
ism. It was a fearful waste of time. “ You are 
so kind to little things,” she whispered at last, with 
a catch in her voice that made the Man drop his 
work suddenly and give all his attention to big 
things. And another evening went, while Hickory 
Dock stood up like a hero and refused to strike 
eleven. 

So every Sunday night throughout the Winter 
and the Spring and the Summer, the Man came 
joyously climbing up the long stairs to the Girl’s 
room, and every Sunday night Hickory Dock was 
started off on a fresh round of Time and Love. 

Hickory Dock, indeed, became a very precious 
object, for both Man and Girl had reached that par- 
ticular stage of love where they craved the wonder- 
ful sensation of owning some vital thing together. 
But they were so busy loving that they did not rec- 
ognize the instinct. The man looked upon Hickory 
Dock as an exceedingly blessed toy. The Girl grew 
gradually to cherish the little clock with a certain 
tender superstition and tingling reverence that sent 
40 


HICKORY DOCK 


her heart pounding every time the Man’s fingers 
turned to any casual tinkering. 

And the Girl grew so exquisitely dear that the 
Man thought all women were like her. And the 
Man grew so sturdily precious that the Girl knew 
positively there was no person on earth to be com- 
pared with him. Over this happiness Hickory 
Dock presided throbbingly, and though he balked 
sometimes and bolted or lagged, he never stopped, 
and he never struck eleven. 

Thus things went on in the customary way that 
things do go on with men and girls — until the 
Chronic Quarrel happened. The Chronic Quarrel 
was a trouble quite distinct from any ordinary 
lovers’ disturbance, and it was a very silly little 
thing like this: The Girl had a nature that was 
emotionally apprehensive. She was always look- 
ing, as it were, for “ dead men in the woods.” 
She was always saying, “ Suppose you get tired of 
me ? ” “ Suppose I died ? ” “ Suppose I found 

out that you had a wife living?” “ Suppose you 
lost all your legs and arms in a railroad accident 
when you were coming here some Sunday night? ” 
And one day the Man had snapped her short 
with “ Suppose ? Suppose ? What arrant non- 
sense ! Suppose ? — Suppose I fall in love with 
the Girl in the Office ? ” 

It seemed to him the most extravagant supposi- 
4i 


HICKORY DOCK 


tion that he could possibly imagine, and he was 
perfectly delighted with its effect on his Sweet- 
heart. She grew silent at once and very wistful. 

After that he met all her apprehensions with 
“ Suppose? — Suppose I fall in love with the Girl 
in the Office ! ” 

And one day the Girl looked up at him with hot 
tears in her eyes and said tersely, “ Well, why don’t 
you fall in love with her if you want to? ” 

That, of course, made a little trouble, but it was 
delicious fun making up, and the “ Girl in the 
Office ” became gradually one of those irresistibly 
dangerous jokes that always begin with laughter 
and end just as invariably with tears. When the 
Girl was sad or blue the Man was clumsy enough 
to try and cheer her with facetious allusions to the 
“ Girl in the Office,” and when the Girl was su- 
premely, radiantly happy she used to boast, “ Why, 
I ’m so happy I don’t care a rap about your old 
4 Girl in the Office.’ ” But whatever way the joke 
began, it always ended disastrously, with bitter- 
ness and tears, yet neither Man nor Girl could bear 
to formally taboo the subject lest it should look 
like the first shirking of their perfect intimacy and 
freedom of speech. The Man felt that in love like 
theirs he ought to be able to say anything he wanted 
to, so he kept on saying it, while the Girl claimed 
an equal if more caustic liberty of expression, and 
42 


HICKORY DOCK 

the Chronic Quarrel began to fester a little round 
its edges. 

One night in November, when Hickory Dock 
was nearly a year old in love, the Chronic Quarrel 
came to a climax. The Man was very listless that 
evening, and absent-minded, and altogether inade- 
quate. The Girl accused him of indifference. He 
accused her in return of a shrewish temper. She 
suggested that perhaps he regretted his visit. He 
failed to contradict her. Then the Girl drew her- 
self up to an absurd height for so small a creature 
and said stiffly, — 

“ You don’t have to come next Sunday night if 
you don’t want to.” 

At her scathing words the Man straightened up 
very suddenly in his chair and gazed over at the 
little clock in a startled sort of way. 

“ Why, of course I shall come,” he retorted im- 
pulsively, “ Hickory Dock needs me, if you don’t.” 

“ Oh, come and wind the clock by all means,” 
flared the Girl. “ I ’m glad something needs 
you!” 

Then the Man followed his own judgment and 
went home, though it was only ten o’clock. 

“ I ’m not going to write to him this week,” 
sobbed poor Rosalie. “ I think he ’s very disa- 
greeable.” 

But when the next Sunday came and the Man 
43 


HICKORY DOCK 


was late , it seemed as though an Eternity had been 
tacked onto a hundred years. It was fully quar- 
ter-past eight before he came climbing up the 
stairs. • 

The Girl looked scornfully at the clock. Her 
throat ached like a bruise. “ You did n’t hurry 
yourself much, did you?” she asked spitefully. 

The Man looked up quickly and bit his lip. 
“ The train was late,” he replied briefly. He did 
not stop to take off his coat, but walked over to 
the table and wound Hickory Dock. Then he hesi- 
tated the smallest possible fraction of a moment, 
but the Girl made no move, so he picked up his hat 
and started for the door. 

The Girl’s heart sank, but her pride rose pro- 
portionally. “ Is that all you came for ? ” she 
flushed. “ Good ! I am very tired to-night.” 

Then the Man went away. She counted every 
footfall on the stairs. In the little hush at the street 
doorway she felt that he must surely turn and come 
running back again, breathless and eager, with out- 
stretched arms and all the kisses she was starving 
for. But when she heard the front door slam with 
a vicious finality she went and threw herself, sob- 
bing on the couch. “ Fifty miles just to wind a 
clock!” she raged in grief and chagrin. “ I ’ll 
punish him for it if that’s all he comes for.” 

So the next Sunday night she took Hickory Dock 
44 


HICKORY DOCK 


with a cruel jerk, and put him on the floor just 
outside her door, and left a candle burning so that 
the Man could not possibly fail to see what was 
intended. “If all he comes for is to wind the 
clock, just because he promised , there ’s no earthly 
use of his coming in,” she reasoned, and went into 
her room and shut and locked her door, waiting 
nervously with clutched hands for the footfall on 
the stairs. “ He loves some one else ! He loves 
some one else! ” she kept prodding herself. 

Just at eight o’clock the Man came. She heard 
him very distinctly on the creaky board at the 
head of the stairs, and her heart beat to suffoca- 
tion. Then she heard him come close to the door, 
as though he stooped down, and then he — 
laughed. 

“ Oh, very well,” thought the Girl. “ So he 
thinks it ’s funny, does he ? He has no business 
to laugh while I am crying, even if he does love 
some one else. — I hate him! ” 

The Man knocked on the door very softly, and 
the Girl gripped tight hold of her chair for fear 
she should jump up and let him in. He knocked 
again, and she heard him give a strange little gasp 
of surprise. Then he tried the door-handle. It 
turned fatuously, but the door would not open. 
He pushed his weight against it, — she could al- 
most feel the soft whirr of his coat on the wood, — • 
45 


HICKORY DOCK 


but the door would not yield. — Then he turned 
very suddenly and went away. 

The Girl got up with a sort of gloating look, as 
though she liked her pain. “ Next Sunday night 
is the last Sunday night of his year’s promise,” she 
brooded ; “ then everything will be over. He will 
see how wise I was not to let him promise forever 
and ever. I will send Hickory Dock to him by 
express to save his coming for the final ceremony.” 
Then she went out and got Hickory Dock and 
brought him in and shook him, but Hickory Dock 
continued to tick, “ Till he comes! Till he comes! 
Till he comes! ” 

It was a very tedious week. It is perfectly ab- 
surd to measure a week by the fact that seven days 
make it — some days are longer than others. By 
Wednesday the Girl’s proud little heart had capitu- 
lated utterly, and she decided not to send Hickory 
Dock away by express, but to let things take their 
natural course. And every time she thought of the 
“ natural course ” her heart began to pound with ex- 
pectation. Of course, she would not acknowledge 
that she really expected the Man to come after her 
cruel treatment of him the previous week. “ Every- 
thing is over. Everything is over,” she kept 
preaching to herself with many gestures and illus- 
trations ; but next to God she put her faith in prom- 
ises, and had n’t the Man promised a great, sacred 
46 


HICKORY DOCK 


lover’s promise that he would come every Sunday 
for a year? So when the final Sunday actually 
came she went to her wedding-box and took out her 
“ second best ” of everything, silk and ruffles and 
laces, and dressed herself up for sheer pride and 
joy, with tingling thoughts of the night when 
she should wear her “ first best ” things. She 
put on a soft, little, white Summer dress that 
the Man liked better than anything else, and stuck 
a pink bow in her hair, and big rosettes on her 
slippers, and drew the big Morris chair towards 
the fire, and brought the Man’s pipe and tobacco- 
box from behind the gilt mirror. Then she took 
Hickory Dock very tenderly and put him outside 
the door, with two pink candles flaming beside 
him, and a huge pink rose over his left ear. She 
thought the Man could smell the rose the second 
he opened the street door. Then she went back to 
her room, and left her door a wee crack open, and 
crouched down on the floor close to it, like a happy, 
wounded thing, and waited — 

But the Man did not come. Eight o’clock, nine 
o’clock, ten o’clock, eleven o’clock, twelve o’clock, 
she waited, cramped and cold, hoping against hope, 
fearing against fear. Every creak on the stairs 
thrilled her. Every fresh disappointment chilled 
her right through to her heart. She sat and 
rocked herself in a huddled heap of pain, she taunted 
4 7 


HICKORY DOCK 


herself with lack of spirit, she goaded herself with 
intricate remorse — but she never left her bitter 
vigil until half-past two. Then some clatter of 
milkmen in the street roused her to the realization 
of a new day, and she got up dazed and icy, like 
one in a dream, and limped over to her couch and 
threw herself down to sleep like a drunken person. 

Late the next morning she woke heavily with a 
vague, dull sense of loss which she could not im- 
mediately explain. She lay and looked with as- 
tonishment at the wrinkled folds of the white mull 
dress that bound her limbs like a shroud. She 
clutched at the tightness of her collar, and fingered 
with surprise the pink bow in her hair. Then 
slowly, one by one, the events of the previous night 
came back to her in all their significance, and with 
a muffled scream of heartbreak she buried her face 
in the pillow. She cried till her heart felt like a 
clenched fist within her, and then, with her passion 
exhausted, she got up like a little, cold, rumpled 
ghost and pattered out to the hall in her silk-stock- 
inged feet, and picked up Hickory Dock with his 
wilted pink rose and brought him in and put him 
back on her desk. Then she brought in the mussy, 
pink-smooched candlesticks and stowed them far. 
away in her closet behind everything else. The 
faintest possible scent of tobacco-smoke came to 
her from the closet depths, and as she reached in- 
48 


HICKORY DOCK 


stinctively to take a sad little whiff she became sud- 
denly conscious that there was a strange, uncanny 
hush in the room, as though a soul had left its 
body. She turned back quickly and cried out with 
a smothered cry. Hickory Dock had stopped! 

“Until — the — end — of — Time,” she gasped, 
and staggered hard against the closet-door. Then 
in a flash she burst out laughing stridently, and 
rushed for Hickory Dock and grabbed him by his 
little silver handle, opened the window with a bang, 
and threw him with all her might and main down 
into the brick alley four stories below, where he 
fell with a sickening crash among a wee handful 
of scattered rose petals. 

— The days that followed were like horrid 
dreams, the nights, like hideous realities. The fire 
would not burn. The sun and moon would not 
shine, and life itself settled down like a pall. 
Every detail of that Sunday night stamped and re- 
stamped itself upon her mind. Back of her out- 
raged love was the crueller pain of her outraged 
faith. The Man of his own free will had made a 
sacred promise and broken it! She realized now 
for the first time in her life why men went to the 
devil because women had failed them — not dis- 
appointed them, but failed them! She could even 
imagine how poor mothers felt when fathers 
shirked their fatherhood. She tasted in one 
49 


4 


HICKORY DOCK 

week’s imagination all possible woman sorrows of 
the world. 

At the end of the second week she began to re- 
alize the depth of isolation into which her engage- 
ment had thrown her. For a year and a half she 
had thought nothing, dreamed nothing, cared for 
nothing except the Man. Now, with the Man 
swept away, there was no place to turn either for 
comfort or amusement. 

At the end of the third week, when no word 
came, she began to gather together all the Man’s 
little personal effects, and consigned them to a box 
out of sight — the pipe and tobacco, a favorite 
book, his soft Turkish slippers, his best gloves, and 
even a little poem which he had written for her 
to set to music. It was a pretty little love-song 
that they had made together, but as she hummed it 
over now for the last time she wondered if, after 
all, woman’s music did not do more than man’s 
words to make love Singable. 

When a month was up she began to strip the 
room of everything that the Man had brought to- 
wards the making of their Home. It was like strip- 
ping tendons. She had never realized before how 
thoroughly the Man’s personality had dominated 
her room as well as her life. When she had 
crowded his books, his pictures, his college trophies, 
his Morris chair, his rugs, into one corner of her 
50 


HICKORY DOCK 


room and covered them with two big sheets, her 
little, paltry, feminine possessions looked like chiffon 
in a desert. 

While she was pondering what to do next her 
rent fell due. The month’s idling had completely 
emptied her pewter savings-bank that she had been 
keeping as a sort of precious joke for the Honey- 
moon. The rent-bill startled her into spasmodic 
efforts at composition. She had been quite busy 
for a year writing songs for some Educational 
people, but how could one make harmony with a 
heart full of discord and all life off the key. A 
single week convinced her of the utter futility of 
these efforts. In one high-strung, wakeful night 
she decided all at once to give up the whole strug- 
gle and go back to her little country village, where 
at least she would find free food and shelter until 
she could get her grip again. 

For three days she struggled heroically with 
burlap and packing-boxes. She felt as though 
every nail she pounded was hurting the Man as well 
as herself, and she pounded just as hard as she 
possibly could. 

When the room was stripped of every atom of 
personality except her couch, and the duplicate 
latch-key, which still hung high and dusty, a de- 
liciously cruel thought came to the Girl, and the 
irony of it set her eyes flashing. On the night be- 
5i 


HICKORY DOCK 


fore her intended departure she took the key and 
put it into a pretty little box and sent it to the 
Man. 

“ He ’ll know by that token,” she said, “ that 
there ’s no more ‘ Home ’ for him and me. He 
will get his furniture a few days later, and then 
he will see that everything is scattered and shat- 
tered. Even if he ’s married by this time, the 
key will hurt him, for his wife will want to know 
what it means, and he never can tell her.” 

Then she cried so hard that her overwrought, 
half-starved little body collapsed, and she crept 
into her bed and was sick all night and all the next 
day, so that there was no possible thought or chance 
of packing or traveling. But towards the second 
evening she struggled up to get herself a taste of 
food and wine from her cupboard, and, wrapping 
herself in her pink kimono, huddled over the fire 
to try and find a little blaze and cheer. 

Just as the flames commenced to flush her cheeks 
the lock clicked. She started up in alarm. The 
door opened abruptly, and the Man strode in with 
a very determined, husbandly look on his haggard 
face. For the fraction of a second he stood and 
looked at her pitifully frightened and disheveled 
little figure. 

“ Forgive me,” he cried, “ but I had to come 
like this.” Then he took one mighty stride and 
52 


HICKORY DOCK 


caught her up in his arms and carried her back 
to her open bed and tucked her in like a child 
while she clung to his neck laughing and sobbing 
and crying as though her brain was turned. He 
smoothed her hair, he kissed her eyes, he rubbed 
his rough cheek confidently against her soft one, 
and finally, when her convulsive tremors quieted a 
little, he reached down into his great overcoat 
pocket and took out poor, battered, mutilated Hick- 
ory Dock. 

“ I found him down in the Janitor’s office just 
now,” he explained, and his mouth twitched just 
the merest trifle at the corners. 

“ Don’t smile,” said the Girl, sitting up suddenly 
very straight and stiff. “ Don’t smile till you 
know the whole truth. / broke Hickory Dock. 
I threw him purposely four stories down into the 
brick alley ! ” 

The Man began to examine Hickory Dock very 
carefully. 

“ I should judge that it was a brick alley,” he 
remarked with an odd twist of his lips, as he tossed 
the shattered little clock over to the burlap-covered 
armchair. 

Then he took the Girl very quietly and tenderly 
in his arms again, and gazed down into her eyes 
with a look that was new to him. 

“ Rosalie,” he whispered, “ I will mend Hickory 
S3 


HICKORY DOCK 


Dock for you if it takes a thousand years,” — his 
voice choked, — “ but I wish to God I could mend 
my broken promise as easily! ” 

And Rosalie smiled through her tears and 
said, — 

“ Sweetheart-Man, you do love me ? ” 

“ With all my heart and soul and body and 
breath, and past and present and future I love 
you!” said the Man. 

Then Rosalie kissed a little path to his ear, and 
whispered, oh, so softly, — 

“ Sweetheart-Man, I love you just that same 
way.” 

And Hickory Dock, the Angel, never ticked the 
passing of a single second, but lay on his back 
looking straight up to Heaven with his two little 
battered hands clasped eternally at Love’s high 
noon . 


54 


THE VERY TIRED GIRL 



THE VERY TIRED GIRL 


N one of those wet, warm, slushy 
February nights when the vapid 
air sags like sodden wool in your 
lungs, and your cheek-bones bore 
through your flesh, and vour 
leaden feet seem strung directly 
from the roots of your eyes, three girls stampeded 
their way through the jostling, peevish street 
crowds with no other object in Heaven or Earth 
except just to get — HOME. 

It was supper time, too, somewhere between six 
and seven, the caved-in hour of the day when the 
ruddy ghost of Other People’s dinners flaunts itself 
rather grossly in the pallid nostrils of Her Who 
Lives by the Chafing-Dish. 

One of the girls was a Medical Masseuse, trained 
brain and brawn in the German Hospitals. One 
was a Public School Teacher with a tickle of chalk 
dust in her lungs. One was a Cartoon Artist with 
a heart like chiffon and a wit as accidentally ma- 
licious as the jab of a pin in a flirt’s belt. 

All three of them were silly with fatigue. The 

5 7 



THE VERY TIRED GIRL 


writhing city cavorted before them like a sick clown. 
A lame cab horse went strutting like a mechanical 
toy. Crape on a door would have plunged them 
into hysterics. Were you ever as tired as that? 

It was, in short, the kind of night that rips out 
every one according to his stitch. Rhoda Hanlan 
the Masseuse was ostentatiously sewed with double 
thread and backstitched at that. Even the little 
Teacher, Ruth MacLaurin, had a physique that was 
embroidered if not darned across its raveled places. 
But Noreen Gaudette, the Cartoon Drawer, with 
her spangled brain and her tissue-paper body, was 
merely basted together with a single silken thread. 
It was the knowledge of being only basted that 
gave Noreen the droll, puckered terror in her eyes 
whenever Life tugged at her with any specially in- 
ordinate strain. 

Yet it was Noreen who was popularly supposed 
to be built with an electric battery instead of a 
heart. 

The boarding-house that welcomed the three was 
rather tall for beauty, narrow-shouldered, flat- 
chested, hunched together in the block like a pru- 
dish, dour old spinster overcrowded in a street car. 
To call such a house “ Home ” was like calling such 
a spinster “ Mother.” But the three girls called it 
“ Home ” and rather liked the saucy taste of the 
word in their mouths. 


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THE VERY TIRED GIRL 


Across the threshold in a final spurt of energy 
the jaded girls pushed with the joyous realization 
that there were now only five flights of stairs be- 
tween themselves and their own attic studio. 

On the first floor the usual dreary vision greeted 
them of a hall table strewn with stale letters — 
most evidently bills, which no one seemed in a hurry 
to appropriate. 

It was twenty-two stumbling, bundle-dropping 
steps to the next floor, where the strictly Bachelor 
Quarters with half-swung doors emitted a pleasant 
gritty sound of masculine voices, and a sumptuous 
cloud of cigarette smoke which led the way fro- 
wardly up twenty-two more toiling steps to the Old 
Maid’s Floor, buffeted itself naughtily against the 
sternly shut doors, and then mounted triumphantly 
like sweet incense to the Romance Floor, where 
with door alluringly open the Much-Loved Girl and 
her Mother were frankly and ingenuously preparing 
for the Monday-Night-Lover’s visit. 

The vision of the Much-Loved Girl smote like a 
brutal flashlight upon the three girls in the hall. 

Out of curl, out of breath, jaded of face, be- 
draggled of clothes, they stopped abruptly and stared 
into the vista. 

Before their fretted eyes the room stretched fresh 
and clean as a newly returned laundry package. 
The green rugs lay like velvet grass across the floor. 
59 


THE VERY TIRED GIRL 


The chintz-covered furniture crisped like the crust 
of a cake. Facing the gilt-bound mirror, the 
Much-Loved Girl sat joyously in all her lingerie- 
waisted, lace-paper freshness, while her Mother 
hovered over her to give one last maternal touch to 
a particularly rampageous blond curl. 

The Much-Loved Girl was a cordial person. 
Her liquid, mirrored reflection nodded gaily out 
into the hall. There was no fatigue in the spar- 
kling face. There was no rain or fog. There was 
no street-corner insult. There was no harried 
stress of wherewithal. There was just Youth, and 
Girl, and Cherishing. 

She made the Masseuse and the little School 
Teacher think of a pale-pink rose in a cut-glass 
vase. But she made Noreen Gaudette feel like a 
vegetable in a boiled dinner. 

With one despairing gasp — half-chuckle and 
half-sob — the three girls pulled themselves to- 
gether and dashed up the last flight of stairs to 
the Trunk-Room Floor, and their own attic studio, 
where bumping through the darkness they turned 
a sulky stream of light upon a room more tired- 
looking than themselves, and then, with almost 
fierce abandon, collapsed into the nearest resting- 
places that they could reach. 

It was a long time before any one spoke. 

Between the treacherous breeze of the open win- 
60 


THE VERY TIRED GIRL 


dow and a withering blast of furnace heat the 
wilted muslin curtain swayed back and forth with 
languid rhythm. Across the damp night air came 
faintly the yearning, lovery smell of violets, and 
the far-off, mournful whine of a sick hand-organ. 

On the black fur hearth-rug Rhoda, the red- 
haired, lay prostrated like a broken tiger lily with 
her long, lithe hands clutched desperately at her 
temples. 

“ I am so tired,” she said. “ I am so tired that 
I can actually feel my hair fade.” 

Ruth, the little Public School Teacher, laughed 
derisively from her pillowed couch where she strug- 
gled intermittently with her suffocating collar and 
the pinchy buckles on her overshoes. 

“ That ’s nothing,” she asserted wanly. “ I am 
so tired that I would like to build me a pink- 
wadded silk house, just the shape of a slipper, where 
I could snuggle down in the toe and go to sleep for 
a — million years. It is n’t to-morrow’s early 
morning that racks me, it ’s the thought of all the 
early mornings between now and the Judgment 
Day. Oh, any sentimental person can cry at night, 
but when you begin to cry in the morning — to lie 
awake and cry in the morning — ” Her face sick- 
ened suddenly. “ Did you see that Mother down- 
stairs?” she gasped, “ fixing that curl? Think of 
having a Mother ! ” 

61 


THE VERY TIRED GIRL 


Then Noreen Gaudette opened her great gray 
eyes and grinned diabolically. She had a funny 
little manner of cartooning her emotions. 

“ Think of having a Mother?” she scoffed. 
“What nonsense! — Think of having a c-u-r-l! 

“ You talk like Sunday-Paper debutantes,” she 
drawled. “ You don’t know anything about being 
tired. Why, I am so tired — I am so tired — that 
I wish — I wish that the first man who ever pro- 
posed to me would come back and ask me — 
again ! ” 

It was then that the Landlady, knocking at the 
door, presented a card, “ Mr. Ernest T. Dext- 
wood,” for Miss Gaudette, and the innocent-look- 
ing conversation exploded suddenly like a short- 
fused firecracker. 

Rhoda in an instant was sitting bolt upright with 
her arms around her knees rocking to and fro in 
convulsive delight. Ruth much more thoughtfully 
jumped for Noreen’s bureau drawer. But Noreen 
herself, after one long, hyphenated “ Oh, my 
H-e-a-v-e-n-s!” threw off her damp, wrinkled coat, 
stalked over to the open window, and knelt down 
quiveringly where she could smother her blazing 
face in the inconsequent darkness. 

For miles and miles the teasing lights of Other 
Women’s homes stretched out before her. From 
the window-sill below her rose the persistent purple 
62 


THE VERY TIRED GIRL 

smell of violets, and the cooing, gauzy laughter of 
the Much-Loved Girl. Fatigue was in the damp 
air, surely, but Spring was also there, and Lone- 
someness, and worst of all, that desolating sense of 
patient, dying snow wasting away before one’s eyes 
like Life itself. 

When Noreen turned again to her friends her 
eyelids drooped defiantly across her eyes. Her lips 
were like a scarlet petal under the bite of her teeth. 
There in the jetty black and scathing white of her 
dress she loomed up suddenly like one of her own 
best drawings — pulseless ink and stale white paper 
vitalized all in an instant by some miraculous emo- 
tional power. A living Cartoon of “ Fatigue ” she 
stood there — “ Fatigue” as she herself would have 
drawn it — no flaccid failure of wilted bone and 
sagging flesh, but Verve — the taut Brain’s pitiless 
rally of the Body that can not afford to rest — the 
verve of Factory Lights blazing overtime, the verve 
of the Runner who drops at his goal. 

“ All the time I am gone,” she grinned, “ pray 
over and over, ‘ Lead Noreen not into temptation.’ ” 
Her voice broke suddenly into wistful laughter: 
“ Why to meet again a man who used to love 
you — it ’s like offering store-credit to a pauper.” 

Then she slammed the door behind her and started 
downstairs for the bleak, plush parlor, with a 
chaotic sense of absurdity and bravado. 

63 


THE VERY TIRED GIRL 


But when she reached the middle of the bachelor 
stairway and looked down casually and spied her 
clumsy arctics butting out from her wet-edged skirt 
all her nervousness focused instantly in her shaking 
knees, and she collapsed abruptly on the friendly 
dark stair and clutching hold of the banister, began 
to whimper. 

In the midst of her stifled tears a door banged 
hard above her, the floor creaked under a sturdy 
step, and the tall, narrow form of the Political 
Economist silhouetted itself against the feeble light 
of the upper landing. 

One step down he came into the darkness — two 
steps, three steps, four, until at last in choking mis- 
erable embarrassment, Noreen cried out hysteric- 
ally: 

“ Don’t step on me — I ’m crying! ” 

With a gasp of astonishment the young man 
struck a sputtering match and bent down waving it 
before him. 

“ Why, it ’s you , Miss Gaudette,” he exclaimed 
with relief. “ What ’s the matter? Are you ill? 
What are you crying about ? ” and he dropped down 
beside her and commenced to fan her frantically 
with his hat. 

“ What are you crying about ? ” he persisted help- 
lessly, drugged man-like, by the same embarrass' 
ment that mounted like wine to the woman’s brain. 
64 


THE VERY TIRED GIRL 


Noreen began to laugh snuffingly. 

“ I ’m not crying about anything special,” she 
acknowledged. “I’m just crying. I ’m crying 
partly because I ’m tired — and partly because I ’ve 
got my overshoes on — but mostly ” — her voice be- 
gan to catch again — “ but mostly — because there ’s 
a man waiting to see me in the parlor.” 

The Political Economist shifted uneasily in his 
rain coat and stared into Noreen’s eyes. 

“ Great Heavens! ” he stammered. “ Do you al- 
ways cry when men come to see you ? Is that why 
you never invited me to call ? ” 

Noreen shook her head. “ I never have men 
come to see me,” she answered quite simply. “ I 
go to see them. I study in their studios. I work 
on their newspapers. I caricature their enemies. 
Oh, it is n’t men that I ’m afraid of,” she added 
blithely, “ but this is something particular. This 
is something really very funny. Did you ever make 
a wish that something perfectly preposterous would 
happen ? ” 

“ Oh, yes,” said the Political Economist reassur- 
ingly. “ This very day I said that I wished my 
Stenographer would swallow the telephone.” 

“ But she did n’t swallow it, did she ? ” persisted 
Noreen triumphantly. “ Now I said that I wished 
some one would swallow the telephone and she did 
swallow it ! ” 

5 


65 


THE VERY TIRED GIRL 


Then her face in the dusky light flared piteously 
with harlequined emotions. Her eyes blazed bright 
with toy excitement. Her lips curved impishly with 
exaggerated drollery. But when for a second her 
head drooped back against the banister her jaded 
small face looked for all the world like a death-mask 
of a Jester. 

The Political Economist’s heart crinkled uncom- 
fortably within him. 

“ Why, you poor little girl,” he said. “ I did n’t 
know that women got as tired as that. Let me take 
off your overshoes.” 

Noreen stood up like a well-trained pony and shed 
her clumsy footgear. 

The Man’s voice grew peremptory. “ Your skirt 
is sopping wet. Are you crazy ? Did n’t have time 
to get into dry things? Nonsense! Have you had 
any supper? What? N-of Wait a minute.” 

In an instant he was flying up the stairs, and when 
he came back there was a big glass of cool milk in 
his hand. 

Noreen drank it ravenously, and then started 
downstairs with abrupt, quick courage. 

When she reached the ground floor the Political 
Economist leaned over the banisters and shouted in 
a piercing whisper : 

“ I ’ll leave your overshoes outside my door 
where you can get them on your way up later.” 

66 


THE VERY TIRED GIRL 


Then he laughed teasingly and added : “I — hope 
— you ’ll — have — a — good — time.” 

And Noreen, cleaving for one last second to the 
outer edge of the banisters, smiled up at him, so 
strainingly up, that her face, to the man above her, 
looked like a little flat white plate with a crimson- 
lipped rose wilting on it. 

Then she disappeared into the parlor. 

With equal abruptness the Political Economist 
changed his mind about going out, and went back 
instead to his own room and plunged himself down 
in his chair, and smoked and thought, until his 
friend, the Poet at the big writing-desk, slapped 
down his manuscript and stared at him inquisi- 
tively. 

“ Lord Almighty ! I wish I could draw ! ” said 
the Political Economist. It was not so much an 
exclamation as a reverent entreaty. His eyes nar- 
rowed sketchily across the vision that haunted him. 
“ If I could draw,” he persisted, “ I ’d make a pic- 
ture that would hit the world like a knuckled fist 
straight between its selfish old eyes. And I ’d call 
that picture 4 Talent.’ I ’d make an ocean chopping 
white and squally, with black clouds scudding like 
fury across the sky, and no land in sight except 
rocks. And I ’d fill that ocean full of sharks and 
things — not showing too much, you know, but just 
an occasional shimmer of fins through the foam. 
67 


THE VERY TIRED GIRL 


And I ’d make a sailboat scooting along, tipped ’way 
over on her side toward you, with just a slip of an 
eager-faced girl in it. And I ’d wedge her in there, 
wind-blown, spray-dashed, foot and back braced to 
the death, with the tiller in one hand and the sheet 
in the other, and weather-almighty roaring all 
around her. And I ’d make the riskiest little leak 
in the bottom of that boat rammed desperately with 
a box of chocolates, and a bunch of violets, and a 
large paper compliment in a man’s handwriting 
reading: ‘ Oh, how clever you are.’ And I ’d have 
that girl’s face haggard with hunger, starved for 
sleep, tense with fear, ravished with excitement. 
But I ’d have her chin up, and her eyes open, and 
the tiniest tilt of a quizzical smile hounding you like 
mad across the snug, gilt frame. Maybe, too, I ’d 
have a woman’s magazine blowing around telling in 
chaste language how to keep the hair 4 smooth ’ and 
the hands 4 velvety,’ and admonishing girls above all 
things not to be eaten by sharks! Good Heavens, 
Man!” he finished disjointedly, ‘‘a girl doesn’t 
know how to sail a boat anyway ! ” 

“W-h-a-t are you talking about?” moaned the 
Poet. 

The Political Economist began to knock the ashes 
furiously out of his pipe. 

“What am I talking about?” he cried; “I’m 
talking about girls. I ’ve always said that I ’d 
68 

w 


THE VERY TIRED GIRL 


gladly fall in love if I only could decide what kind 
of a girl I wanted to fall in love with. Well, I ’ve 
decided ! ” 

The Poet’s face furrowed. “ Is it the Much- 
Loved Girl ? ” he stammered. 

The Political Economist’s smoldering temper be- 
gan to blaze. 

“ No, it is n’t,” ejaculated the Political Econo- 
mist. “ The Much-Loved Girl is a sweet enough, 
airy, fairy sort of girl, but I ’m not going to fall in 
love with just a pretty valentine.” 

“ Going to try a * Comic ’ ? ” the Poet suggested 
pleasantly. 

The Political Economist ignored the impertinence. 
“ I am reasonably well off,” he continued medi- 
tatively, “ and I ’m reasonably good-looking, and 
I ’ve contributed eleven articles on 4 Men and 
Women ’ to modern economic literature, but it ’s 
dawned on me all of a sudden that in spite of all 
my beauteous theories regarding life in general, I 
am just one big shirk when it comes to life in par- 
ticular.” 

The Poet put down his pen and pushed aside his 
bottle of rhyming fluid, and began to take notice. 

44 Whom are you going to fall in love with ? ” he 
demanded. 

The Political Economist sank back into his chair. 

“ I don’t quite know,” he added simply, 44 but 
69 


THE VERY TIRED GIRL 


she ’s going to be some tired girl. Whatever else 
she may or may not be, she ’s got to be a tired 
girl.” 

“ A tired girl?” scoffed the Poet. “That’s no 
kind of a girl to marry. Choose somebody who ’s 
all pink and white freshness. That ’s the kind of a 
girl to make a man happy.” 

The Political Economist smiled a bit viciously be- 
hind his cigar. 

“ Half an hour ago,” he affirmed, “ I was a beast 
just like you. Good Heavens! Man,” he cried out 
suddenly, “ did you ever see a girl cry ? Really cry, 
I mean. Not because her manicure scissors jabbed 
her thumb, but because her great, strong, tyrant, 
sexless brain had goaded her poor little woman-body 
to the very crudest, last vestige of its strength and 
spirit. Did you ever see a girl like that Miss Gau- 
dette upstairs — she ’s the Artist, you know, who 
did those cartoons last year that played the devil 
itself with * Congress Assembled ’ — did you ever 
see a girl like that just plain thrown down, tripped 
in her tracks, sobbing like a hurt, tired child? Your 
pink and white prettiness can cry like a rampant 
tragedy-queen all she wants to over a misfitted col- 
lar, but my hand is going here and now to the big- 
brained girl who cries like a child ! ” 

“ In short,” interrupted the Poet, “ you are going 
to help — Miss Gaudette sail her boat ? ” 

70 


THE VERY TIRED GIRL 


“ Y-e-s,” said the Political Economist. 

“ And so,” mocked the Poet, “ you are going to 
jump aboard and steer the young lady adroitly to 
some port of your own choosing? ” 

The older man’s jaws tightened ominously. 
“ No, by the Lord Almighty, that ’s just what I am 
not going to do ! ” he promised. “ I ’m going to 
help her sail to the port of her own choosing! ” 

The Poet began to rummage in his mind for ade- 
quate arguments. “ Oh, allegorically,” he conceded, 
“ your scheme is utterly charming, but from any ma- 
terial, matrimonial point of view I should want to 
remind myself pretty hard that overwrought brains 
do not focus very easily on domestic interests, nor 
do arms which have tugged as you say at ‘ sheets ’ 
and ‘ tillers ’ curve very dimplingly around young- 
sters’ shoulders.” 

The Political Economist blew seven mighty 
smoke-puffs from his pipe. 

“ That would be the economic price I deserve to 
pay for not having arrived earlier on the scene,” he 
said quietly. 

The Poet began to chuckle. “ You certainly are 
hard hit,” he scoffed. 

“ Political Economy 
Gone to rhyme with Hominy! 

It ’s an exquisite scheme ! ” 

7 1 


THE VERY TIRED GIRL 


“ It ’s a rotten rhyme/’ attested the Political 
Economist, and strode over to the mantel- 
piece, where he began to hunt for a long piece of 
twine. 

“ Miss Gaudette,” he continued, “ is downstairs 
in the parlor now entertaining a caller — some res- 
urrected beau, I believe. Anyway, she left her 
overshoes outside my door to get when she comes 
up again, and I ’m going to tie one end of this string 
to them and the other end to my wrist, so that when 
she picks up her shoes a few hours later it will wake 
me from my nap, and I can make one grand rush 
for the hall and — ” 

“ Propose then and there? ” quizzed the Poet. 

“ No, not exactly. But I ’m going to ask her if 
she ’ll let me fall in love with her.” 

The Poet sniffed palpably and left the room. 

But the Political Economist lay back in his chair 
and went to sleep with a great, pleasant expectancy 
in his heart. 

When he woke at last with a sharp, tugging pain 
at his wrist the room was utterly dark, and the little 
French clock had stopped aghast and clasped its 
hands at eleven. 

For a second he rubbed his eyes in perplexity. 
Then he jumped to his feet, fumbled across the 
room and opened the door to find Noreen staring 
with astonishment at the tied overshoes. 

72 


THE VERY TIRED GIRL 


“ Oh, I wanted to speak to you,” he began. Then 
his eyes focused in amazement on a perfectly huge 
bunch of violets which Noreen was clasping des- 
perately in her arms. 

“ Good Heavens ! ” he cried. “ Is anybody 
dead ? ” 

But Noreen held the violets up like a bulwark 
and commenced to laugh across them. 

“ He did propose,” she said, “ and I accepted him! 
Does it look as though I had chosen to be engaged 
with violets instead of a ring?” she suggested 
blithely. “ It ’s only that I asked him if he would 
be apt to send me violets, and when he said : 
‘ Yes, every week/ I just asked if I please could n’t 
have them all at once. There must be a Billion dol- 
lars’ worth here. I ’m going to have a tea-party to- 
morrow and invite the Much-Loved Girl.” The 
conscious, childish malice of her words twisted her 
lips into an elfish smile. “ It ’s Mr. Ernest Dext- 
wood,” she rattled on : “ Ernest Dextwood, the Cof- 
fee Merchant. He ’s a widower now — with three 
children. Do — you — think — that — I — will — 
make — a — good — stepmother ? ” 

The violets began to quiver against her breast, 
but her chin went higher in rank defiance of the 
perplexing something which she saw in the Political 
Economist’s narrowing eyes. She began to quote 
with playful recklessness Byron’s pert parody : 

73 


THE VERY TIRED GIRL 


“ There is a tide in the affairs of women 
Which taken at its flood leads — God Knows Where.” 

But when the Political Economist did not an- 
swer her, but only stared with brooding, troubled 
eyes, she caught her breath with a sudden terrify- 
ing illumination. “ Ouch ! ” she said. “ O-u-c-h ! ” 
and wilted instantly like a frost-bitten rose under 
heat. All the bravado, all the stamina, all the glint 
of her, vanished utterly. 

“ Mr. Political Economist,” she stammered, “ Life 
— is — too — hard — for — me. I am not Rhoda 
Hanlan with her sturdy German peasant stock. I 
am not Ruth MacLaurin with her Scotch-plaited 
New Englandism. Nationality does n’t count with 
me. My Father was a Violinist. My Mother was 
an Actress. In order to marry, my Father 
swapped his music for discordant factory noises, 
and my Mother shirked a dozen successful roles to 
give one life-long, very poor imitation of Happi- 
ness. My Father died of too much to drink. My 
Mother died of too little to eat. And I was bred, 
I guess, of very bitter love, of conscious sacrifice — 
of thwarted genius — of defeated vanity. Life — 
is — too — hard — for — me — alone. I can not 
finance it. I can not safeguard it. I can not weather 
it. I am not seaworthy! You might be willing to 
risk your own self-consciousness, but when the dead 
begin to come back and clamor in you — when you 
74 


THE VERY TIRED GIRL 


laugh unexpectedly with your Father’s restive voice 
— when you quicken unexplainably to the Lure of 
gilt and tinsel — ” A whimper of pain went scud- 
ding across her face, and she put back her head and 
grinned — “ You can keep my overshoes for a 
souvenir,” she finished abruptly. “ I ’m not allowed 
any more to go out when it storms ! ” Then she 
turned like a flash and ran swiftly up the stairs. 

When he heard the door slam hard behind her, 
the Political Economist fumbled his way back 
through the darkened room to his Morris chair, and 
threw himself down again. Ernest Dextwood? 
He knew him well, a prosperous, kindly, yet do- 
mestically tyrannical man, bright in the office, stupid 
at home. Ernest Dextwood! So much less of a 
girl would have done for him. 

A widower with three children? The eager, un- 
spent emotionalism of Noreen’s face flaunted itself 
across his smoky vision. All that hunger for Life, 
for Love, for Beauty, for Sympathy, to be blunted 
once for all in a stale, misfitting, ready-made home? 
A widower with three children! God in Heaven, 
was she as tired as that! 

It was a whole long week before he saw Noreen 
again. When he met her at last she had just come 
in from automobiling, all rosy-faced and out of 
breath, with her thin little face peering almost 
plumply from its heavy swathings of light-blue veil- 
75 


THE VERY TIRED GIRL 


in g, and her slender figure deeply wrapped in a 
wondrous covert coat 

Rhoda Hanlan and Ruth MacLaurin were close 
behind her, much more prosaically garnished in golf 
capes and brown-colored mufflers. The Political 
Economist stood by on the stairs to let them pass, 
and Noreen looked back at him and called out 
gaily: 

“ It ’s lots of fun to be engaged. We ’re all en- 
joying it very much. It ’s bully ! ” 

The next time he saw her she was on her way 
downstairs to the parlor, in a long-tailed, soft, black 
evening gown that bothered her a bit about manag- 
ing. Her dark hair was piled up high on her head, 
and she had the same mischievous, amateur-theat- 
rical charm that the blue chiffon veil and covert coat 
had given her. 

Quite frankly she demanded the Political Econ- 
omist’s appreciation of her appearance. 

“ Just see how nice I can look when I really try? ” 
she challenged him, “ but it took me all day to do 
it, and my work went to smash — and my dress cost 
seventy dollars,” she finished wryly. 

But the Political Economist was surly about his 
compliment. 

“ No, I like you better in your little business 
suit,” he attested gruffly. And he lied, and he knew 
that he lied, for never before had he seen the shrewd 
76 


THE VERY TIRED GIRL 


piquancy of her eyes so utterly swamped by just the 
wild, sweet lure of girlhood. 

Some time in May, however, when the shop win- 
dows were gay with women’s luxuries, he caught a 
hurried glimpse of her face gazing rather tragically 
at a splurge of lilac-trimmed hats. 

Later in the month he passed her in the Park, 
cuddled up on a bench, with her shabby business suit 
scrunched tight around her, her elbows on her knees, 
her chin burrowed in her hands, and her fiercely 
narrowed eyes quaffing like some outlawed thing at 
the lusty new green grass, the splashing fountain, 
the pinky flush of flowering quince. But when he 
stopped to speak to her she jumped up quickly and 
pleaded the haste of an errand. 

It was two weeks later in scorching June that the 
biggest warehouses on the river caught fire in the 
early part of the evening. The day had been as 
harsh as a shining, splintery plank. The night was 
like a gray silk pillow. In blissful, soothing con- 
sciousness of perfect comfort every one in the 
boarding-house climbed up on the roof to watch the 
gorgeous, fearful conflagration across the city. The 
Landlady’s voice piped high and shrill discussing the 
value of insurance. The Old Maids scuttled to- 
gether under their knitted shawls. The Much- 
Loved Girl sat amiably enthroned among the bach- 
elors with one man’s coat across her shoulders, an- 
77 


THE VERY TIRED GIRL 


other man’s cap on her yellow head, and two de- 
liciously timid hands clutched at the coat-sleeves 
of the two men nearest her. Whenever she bent 
her head she trailed the fluff of her hair across the 
enraptured eyelids of the Poet. 

Only Noreen Gaudette was missing. 

“ Where is Miss Gaudette ? ” probed the Political 
Economist. 

The Masseuse answered vehemently : “ Why, 

Noreen ’s getting ready to go to the fire. Her paper 
sent for her just as we came up. There ’s an awful 
row on, you know, about the inefficiency of the Fire 
Department, and there ’s no other person in all the 
city who can make people look as silly as Noreen 
can. If this thing appeals to her to-night, and she 
gets good and mad enough, and keeps her nerve, 
there ’ll be the biggest overhauling of the Fire De- 
partment that you ever saw ! But I ’m sorry it 
happened. It will be an all-night job, and Noreen 
is almost dead enough as it is.” 

“An ‘all-night job’?” The Much-Loved Girl 
gasped out her startled sense of propriety, and snug- 
gled back against the shoulder of the man who sat 
nearest to her. She was very genuinely sorry for 
any one who had to be improper. 

The Political Economist, noting the incident in 
its entirety, turned abruptly on his heel, climbed 
down the tremulous ladder to the trunk-room 
78 


THE VERY TIRED GIRL 

floor and knocked peremptorily at Noreen’s 
door. 

In reply to the answer which he thought he heard, 
he turned the handle of the door and entered. The 
gas jet sizzled blatantly across the room, and a tiny 
blue flame toiled laboriously in a cooking lamp be- 
neath a pot of water. The room was reeking strong 
with the smell of coffee, the rank brew that wafted 
him back in nervous terror to his college days and 
the ghastly eve of his final examinations. A coat, 
a hat, a mouse-gray sweater, a sketch-book, and a 
bunch of pencils were thrown together on the edge 
of the divan. Crouched on the floor with head and 
shoulders prostrate across her easel chair and thin 
hands straining at the woodwork was Noreen 
Gaudette. The startled face that lifted to his was 
haggard with the energy of a year rallied to the 
needs of an hour. 

“ I thought you told me to come in,” said the Po- 
litical Economist. “ I came down to go to the fire 
with you.” 

Noreen was on her feet in an instant, hurrying 
into her hat and coat, and quaffing greedily at the 
reeking coffee. 

“ You ought to have some one to look after you,” 
persisted the man. “ Where ’s Mr. Dextwood ? ” 

Noreen stood still in the middle of the floor and 
stared at him. 


79 


THE VERY TIRED GIRL 


“ Why, I ’ve broken my engagement,” she ex- 
claimed, trying hard to speak tamely and reserve 
every possible fraction of her artificial energy. 

“ Oh, yes,” she smiled wanly, “ I could n’t afford 
to be engaged ! I could n’t afford the time. I 
could n’t afford the money. I could n’t afford the 
mental distraction. I ’m working again now, but 
it ’s horribly hard to get back into the mood. My 
drawing has all gone to smash. But I ’ll get the 
hang of it again pretty soon.” 

“ You look in mighty poor shape to work to- 
night,” said the Political Economist. “ What 
makes you go ? ” 

“What makes me go?” cried Noreen, with an 
extravagant burst of vehemence. “ What makes 
me go? — Why, if I make good to-night on those 
Fire-Department Pictures I get a Hundred Dollars, 
as well as the assurance of all the Republican car- 
tooning for the next city election. It ’s worth a lot 
of money to me! ” 

“ Enough to kill yourself for? ” probed the Man. 

Noreen’s mouth began to twist. “Yes — if you 
still owe for your automobile coat, and your black 
evening gown, and your room rent and a few other 
trifles of that sort. But come on, if you ’ll promise 
*not to talk to me till it ’s all over.” Like a pair of 
youngsters they scurried down the stairs, jumped 
80 


THE VERY TIRED GIRL 


into the waiting cab, and galloped off toward the 
river edge of the city. 

True to his promise, the Political Economist did 
not speak to her, but he certainly had not promised 
to keep his eyes shut as well as his mouth. From 
the very first she sat far forward on the seat where 
the passing street-lights blazed upon her unconscious 
face. The Man, the cab, love-making, debt-paying, 
all were forgotten in her desperate effort to keep 
keyed up to the working-point. Her brain was 
hurriedly sketching in her backgrounds. Her sud- 
denly narrowed eyes foretold the tingling pride in 
some particular imagining. The flashing twist of 
her smile predicted the touch of malice that was to 
make her pictures the sensation of — a day. 

The finish of the three-mile drive found her jubi- 
lant, prescient, pulsing with power. The glow from 
the flames lit up the cab like a room. The engine 
bells clanged around them. Sparks glittered. 
Steam hissed. When the cabman’s horse refused to 
scorch his nose any nearer the conflagration, Noreen 
turned to the Political Economist with some embar- 
rassment. “ If you really want to help me,” she 
pleaded, “ you ’ll stay here in the cab and wait for 
me. 

Then, before the Political Economist could offer 
his angry protest, she had opened the door, jumped 
6 81 


THE VERY TIRED GIRL 


from the step, and disappeared into the surging, 
rowdy throng of spectators. A tedious hour later 
the cab door opened abruptly, and Noreen reap- 
peared. 

Her hat was slouched down over her heat- 
scorched eyes. Her shoulders were limp. Her 
face was dull, dumb, gray, like a Japanese lantern 
robbed of its candle. Bluntly she thrust her sketch- 
book into his hands and threw herself down on the 
seat beside him. 

“ Oh, take me home,” she begged. “ Oh, take 
me home quick. It ’s no use,” she added with a 
shrug, “ I ’ve seen the whole performance. I ’ve 
been everywhere — inside the ropes — up on the 
roofs — out on the waterfront. The Fire Depart- 
ment Men are not 4 inefficient.' They ’re simply 
bully! And I make no caricatures of heroes !” 

The lurch of the cab wheel against a curbstone 
jerked a faint smile into her face. “ Is n’t it hor- 
rid,” she complained, “ to have a Talent and a Liv- 
ing that depend altogether upon your getting 
mad?” Then her eyes flooded with worry. 
“What shall I do?” 

“ You ’ll marry me,” said the Political Econ- 
omist. 

“ Oh, no ! ” gasped Noreen. “ I shall never, 
never marry any one ! I told you that I could n’t 
afford to be engaged. It takes too much time, and 
82 


THE VERY TIRED GIRL 


besides / 5 her color flamed piteously, “ I did n’t like 
being engaged.” 

“ I did n’t ask you to be engaged,” persisted the 
Political Economist. “ I did n’t ask you to serve 
any underpaid, ill-fed, half-hearted apprenticeship 
to Happiness. I asked you to be married.” 

“ Oh, no ! ” sighed Noreen. “ I shall never 
marry any one.” 

The Political Economist began to laugh. “ Going 
to be an old maid ? ” he teased. 

The high lights flamed into Noreen’s eyes. She 
braced herself into the corner of the carriage and 
fairly hurled her defiance at him. Indomitable pur- 
pose raged in her heart, unutterable pathos drooped 
around her lips. Every atom of blood in her body 
was working instantly in her brain. No single drop 
of it loafed in her cheeks under the flimsy guise of 
embarrassment. 

“ I am not an ‘ Old Maid ! 5 I am not! No one 
who creates anything is an ‘ Old Maid ’ ! ” 

The passion of her mood broke suddenly into 
wilful laughter. She shook her head at him 
threateningly. 

“ Don’t you ever dare to call me an ‘ Old Maid ’ 
again. — But I ’ll tell you just what you can call 
me — Women are supposed to be the Poetry of 
Life, aren’t they — the Sonnet, the Lyric, the 
Limerick? Well — I am blank verse. That is 
83 


THE VERY TIRED GIRL 

the trouble with me. I simply do not rhyme . — 
That is all ! ” 

“ Will you marry me?” persisted the Political 
Economist. 

Noreen shook her head. “ No ! ” she repeated. 
“ You don’t seem to understand. Marriage is not 
for me. I tell you that I am Blank Verse. I am 
Talent , and I do not rhyme with Love. I am Talent 
and I do not rhyme with Man. There is no place 
in my life for you. You can not come into my 
verse and rhyme with me ! ” 

“ Are n’t you a little bit exclusive ? ” goaded the 
Political Economist. 

Noreen nodded gravely. “ Yes,” she said, “ I 
am brutally exclusive. But everybody is n’t. Life 
is so easy for some women. Now, the Much-Loved 
Girl is nothing in the world except 'Miss.’ She 
rhymes inevitably with almost anybody’s kiss. — / 
am not just ' Miss/ The Much-Loved Girl is noth- 
ing in the world except ‘ Girl.’ — She rhymes inev- 
itably with ‘ Curl.’ I am not just ‘Girl/ She 
is ‘ Coy ’ and rhymes with 4 Boy.’ She is ‘ Simple * 
and rhymes with 4 Dimple.’ I am none of those 
things ! I haven’t the Lure of the Sonnet. I 
have n’t the Charm of the Lyric. I have n’t the 
Bait of the Limerick. At the very best I am 
‘ Brain ’ and rhyme with ‘Pain.’ And I wish I 
was dead! ” 


84 


THE VERY TIRED GIRL 


The Political Economist’s heart was pounding 
like a gong smothered in velvet. But he stooped 
over very quietly and pushed the floor cushion under 
her feet and snuggled the mouse-gray sweater into 
a pillowed roll behind her aching neck. Then from 
his own remotest corner he reached out casually and 
rallied her limp, cold hand into the firm, warm clasp 
of his vibrant fingers. 

“ Of course, you never have rhymed,” he said. 
“ How could you possibly have rhymed when — 
I am the missing lines of your verse?” His clasp 
tightened. “ Never mind about Poetry to-night, 
Dear, but to-morrow we’ll take your little incom- 
plete lonesome verse and quicken it into a Love- 
Song that will make the Oldest Angel in Heaven 
sit up and carol ! ” 


85 



THE HAPPY-DAY 




THE HAPPY-DAY 


T was not you, yourself, who in- 
vented your Happy-day. It was 
your Father, long ago in little- 
lad time, when a Happy-Day or 
a Wooden Soldier or High Heaven 
itself lay equally tame and gift- 
able in the cuddling, curving hollow of a Father’s 
hand. 

Your Father must have been a very great Gen- 
ius. How else could he have invented any happy 
thing in the black-oak library? 

The black-oak library was a cross-looking room, 
dingy, lowering, and altogether boggy. You could 
not stamp your boot across the threshold without 
joggling the heart-beats out of the gaunt old clock 
that loomed in the darkermost corner of the alcove. 
You could not tiptoe to the candy box without 
plunging headlong into a stratum of creakiness that 
puckered your spine as though an electric devil 
were pulling the very last basting thread out of 
your little soul. Oh, it must have been a very, 
very aged room. The darkness was abhorrent to 
89 



THE HAPPY-DAY 


you. The dampness reeked with the stale, sad 
breath of ancient storms. Worst of all, blood-red 
curtains clotted at the windows; rusty swords and 
daggers hung most imminently from the walls, and 
along the smutted hearth a huge, moth-eaten tiger 
skin humped up its head in really terrible ferocity. 

Through all the room there was no lively spot 
except the fireplace itself. 

Usually, white birch logs flamed on the hearth 
with pleasant, crackling cheerfulness, but on this 
special day you noted with alarm that between the 
gleaming andirons a soft, red-leather book writhed 
and bubbled with little gray wisps of pain, while 
out of a charry, smoochy mass of nothingness a 
blue-flowered muslin sleeve stretched pleadingly to- 
ward you for an instant, shuddered, blazed, and 
was — gone. 

It was there that your Father caught you, with 
that funny, strange sniff of havoc in your nostrils. 

It was there that your Father told you his news. 

When you are only a little, little boy and your 
Father snatches you suddenly up in his arms and 
tells you that he is going to be married again, it is 
very astonishing. You had always supposed that 
your Father was perfectly married! In the daz- 
zling sunshine of the village church was there not 
a thrilly blue window that said quite distinctly, 
“ Clarice Val Dere ” (that was your Mother) 
90 


THE HAPPY-DAY 


“Lived” {Lived, it said!) “June, i860 — Decem- 
ber, 1880”? All the other windows said “Died” 
on them. Why should your Father marry again? 

In your Dear Father’s arms you gasped, “ Go- 
ing to be married?” and your two eyes must have 
popped right out of your head, for your Father 
stooped down very suddenly and kissed them hard 
— whack, whack, back into place. 

“ N — o, not going to be married,” he corrected, 
“ but going to be married — again.” 

He spoke as though there were a great differ- 
ence; but it was man-talk and you did not under- 
stand it. 

Then he gathered you into the big, dark chair 
and pushed you way out on his knees and scrunched 
your cheeks in his hands and ate your face all up 
with his big eyes. When he spoke at last, his voice 
was way down deep like a bass drum. 

“Little Boy Jack,” he said, “you must never, 
never, never forget your Dear Mother ! ” 

His words and the bir-r-r of them shook you like 
a leaf. 

“ But what was my Dear Mother like ? ” you 
whimpered. You had never seen your Mother. 

Then your Father jumped up and walked hard 
on the creaky floor. When he turned round again, 
his eyes were all wet and shiny like a brown stained- 
glass window. 


91 


THE HAPPY-DAY 


“ What was your Dear Mother like?” he re- 
peated. “ Your Dear Mother was like — was like 

— the flash of a white wing across a stormy sea. 
And your Dear Mother’s name was ‘ Clarice.’ I 
give it to you for a Memorial. What better Me- 
morial could a little boy have than his Dear Moth- 
er’s name ? And there is a date — ” His voice 
grew suddenly harsh and hard like iron, and his 
lips puckered on his words as with a taste of rust 
— “there is a date — the 26th of April — No, 
that is too hard a date for a little boy’s memory! 
It was a Thursday. I give you Thursday for your 

— Happy-Day. ‘ Clarice ’ for a Memorial, and 
Thursday for your Happy-Day.” His words be- 
gan to beat on you like blows. “As — long — as 

— you — live,” he cried, “ be very kind to any one 
who is named ‘ Clarice.’ And no matter what Time 
brings you — weeks, months, years, centuries — 
keep Thursday for your Happy-Day. No cruelty 
must ever defame it, no malice, no gross bitter- 
ness.” 

Then he crushed you close to him for the mil- 
lionth, billionth fraction of a second, and went 
away, while you stayed behind in the scary black- 
oak library, feeling as big and achy and responsible 
as you used to feel when you and your Dear 
Father were carrying a heavy suit-case together 
and your Dear Father let go his share just a mo- 
92 


THE HAPPY-DAY 


ment to light his brown cigar. It gave you a beau- 
tiful feeling in your head, but way off in your stom- 
ach it tugged some. 

So you crept away to bed at last, and dreamed 
that on a shining path leading straight from your 
front door to Heaven you had to carry all alone two 
perfectly huge suit-cases packed tight with love, 
and one of the suit-cases was marked “ Clarice ” 
and one was marked “ Thursday.” Tug, tug, tug, 
you went, and stumble, stumble, stumble, but your 
Dear Father could not help you at all because he 
was perfectly busy carrying a fat leather bag, some 
golf sticks, and a bull-terrier for a strange lady. 

It was not a pleasant dream, and you screamed 
out so loud in the night that the Housekeeper- 
Woman had to come and comfort you. It was 
the Housekeeper- Woman who told you that on the 
morrow your Father was going far off across the 
salt seas. It was the Housekeeper- Woman who 
told you that you, yourself, were to be given away 
to a Grandmother-Lady in Massachusetts. It was 
also the Housekeeper-Woman who told you that 
your puppy dog Bruno — Bruno the big, the black, 
the curly, the waggy, was not to be included in the 
family gift to the Grandmother-Lady. Everybody 
reasoned, it seemed, that you would not need Bruno 
because there would be so many other dogs in Mas- 
sachusetts. That was just the trouble. They would 
93 


THE HAPPY-DAY 


all be “ other dogs.” It was Bruno that you 
wanted, for he was the only dog, just as you were 
the only boy in the world. All the rest were only 
“ other boys.” You could have explained the mat- 
ter perfectly to your Father if the Housekeeper- 
Woman had not made you cry so that you broke 
your explainer. But later in the night the most 
beautiful thought came to you. At first perhaps 
it tasted a little bit sly in your mouth, but after a 
second it spread like ginger, warm and sweet over 
your whole body except your toes, and you crept 
out of bed like a flannel ghost and fumbled your 
way down the black hall to your Dear Father’s 
room and woke him shamelessly from his sleep. 
His eyes in the moonlight gleamed like two fright- 
ened dreams. 

“ Dear Father,” you cried — you could hardly 
get the words fast enough out of your mouth — 
“ Dear — Father — I — do — not — think — 
Bruno — is — a — very — good — name — for — 
a — big — black — dog — I — am — going — to 
— name — him — Clarice — instead ! ” 

That was how you and Bruno-Clarice happened 
to celebrate together your first Happy-Day with a 
long, magic, joggling train journey to Massachu- 
setts — the only original boy and the only original 
dog in all the world. 

The Grandmother-Lady proved to be a very 
94 


THE HAPPY-DAY 


pleasant purple sort of person. Exactly whose 
Grandmother she was, you never found out. She 
was not your Father’s mother. She was not your 
Mother’s mother. With these links missing, whose 
Grandmother could she be? You could hardly 
press the matter further without subjecting her to 
the possible mortification of confessing that she was 
only adopted. Maybe, crudest of all, she was just 
a Paid-Grandmother. 

The Grandmother-Lady lived in a perfectly 
brown house in a perfectly green garden on the 
edge of a perfectly blue ocean. That was the 
Sight of it. Salted mignonette was the Smell of 
it. And a fresh wind flapping through tall poplar 
trees was always and forever the Sound of it. 

The brown house itself was the living image of 
a prim, old-fashioned bureau backed up bleakly to 
the street, with its piazza side yanked out boldly 
into the garden like a riotous bureau drawer, 
through which the Rising Sun rummaged every 
morning for some particular new shade of scarlet 
or yellow nasturtiums. As though quite shocked 
by such bizarre untidiness, the green garden ran 
tattling like mad down to the ocean and was most 
frantically shooed back again, so that its little trees 
and shrubs and flowers fluttered in a perpetual nerv- 
ous panic of not knowing which way to blow. 

But the blue ocean was the most wonderful thing 

* 95 


THE HAPPY-DAY 


of all. Never was there such an ocean! Right 
from the far-away edge of the sky it came, roaring, 
ranting, rumpling, till it broke against the beach 
all white and frilly like the Grandmother-Lady’s 
best ruching. It was morning when you saw the 
ocean first, and its pleasant waters gleamed like 
a gorgeous, bright-blue looking-glass covered with 
paper ships all filled with Other Boys’ fathers. It 
was not till the first night came down — black and 
mournful and moany — it was not till the first 
night came down that you saw that the ocean was 
Much Too Large. There in your chill linen bed, 
with the fear of Sea and Night and Strangers upon 
you, you discovered a very strange droll thing — 
that your Father was a Person and might there- 
fore leave you, but that your Mother was a feeling 
and would never, never, never forsake you. Bruno- 
Clarice, slapping his fat, black tail against your 
bedroom floor, was something of a feeling too. 

Most fortunately for your well-being, the Grand- 
mother-Lady’s house was not too isolated from its 
neighbors. To be sure, a tall, stiff hedge sepa- 
rated the green garden from the lavender-and-pink 
garden next door, but a great scraggly hole in the 
hedge gave a beautiful prickly zest to friendly com- 
munication. 

More than this, two children lived on the other 

9 6 



The blue ocean was the most wonderful thing of all 






THE HAPPY-DAY 


side of the hedge. You had never had any play- 
mates before in all your life! 

One of the children was just Another Boy — a 
duplicate of you. But the other one was — the 
only original girl. Next to the big ocean, she was 
the surprise of your life. She wore skirts instead 
of clothes. She wore curls instead of hair. She 
wore stockings instead of legs. She cried when 
you laughed. She laughed when you cried. She 
was funny from the very first second, even when 
the Boy asked you if your big dog would bite. 
The Boy stood off and kept right on asking : 
“ Will he bite? Will he bite? W-i-l-l he bite t” 
But the Girl took a great rough stick and pried 
open Bruno-Clarice’s tusky mouth to see if he 
would , and when he g-r-o-w-l-e-d, she just kissed 
him smack on his black nose and called him “ A 
Precious,” and said, “ Why, of course he ’ll bite.” 

The Boy was ten years old — a year older, and 
much fatter than you. His name was Sam. The 
Girl was only eight years old, and you could not 
tell at first whether she was thin or fat, she was 
so ruffledy. She had a horrid dressy name, 
“ Sophia.” But everybody called her Ladykin. 

Oh, it is fun to make a boat that will flop side- 
ways through the waves. It is fun to make a wind- 
mill that will whirl and whirl in the grass. It is 
7 97 


THE HAPPY-DAY 


fun to make an education. It is fun to make a 
fortune. But most of anything in the world it is 
fun to make a friend! 

You had never made a friend before. First of 
all you asked, “ How old are you ? ” “ Can you 

do fractions ?” “Can you name the capes on the 
west coast of Africa?” “What is your favorite 
color ? Green ? Blue ? Pink ? Red ? Or yel- 
low?” Sam voted for green. Ladykin chose 
green and blue and pink and red and yellow, also 
purple. Then you asked, “ Which are you most 
afraid of, the Judgment Day or a Submarine 
Boat ? ” Sam chose the Submarine Boat right off, 
so you had to take the Judgment Day, which was 
not a very pleasant fear to have for a pet. Lady- 
kin declared that she was n’t afraid of anything in 
the world except of Being Homely. Was n’t that 
a silly fear? Then you got a little more intimate 
and asked, “What is your Father’s business?” 
Sam and Ladykin’s Father kept a huge candy store. 
It was mortifying to have to confess that your Fa- 
ther was only an Artist, but you laid great stress on 
his large eyes and his long fingers. 

Then you three went off to the sandy beach and 
climbed up on a great huddly gray rock to watch 
the huge yellow sun go down all shiny and im- 
portant, like a twenty-dollar gold piece in a wad 
of pink cotton batting. The tide was going out, 
98 


THE HAPPY-DAY 


too, the mean old “ in j un-giver, 1 ” taking back all 
the pretty, chuckling pebbles, the shining ropes of 
seaweed, the dear salt secrets it had brought so 
teasingly to your feet a few hours earlier. You 
were very lonesome. But not till the gold and pink 
was almost gone from the sky did you screw your 
courage up to its supreme point. First you threw 
four stones very far out into the surf, then — 

“ What — is — your — Mother — like ? ” you 
whispered. 

Ladykin went to her answer with impetuous cer- 
tainty : 

“ Our Mother,” she announced, “ is fat and short 
and wears skin-tight dresses, and is President of 
the Woman’s Club, and is sometimes cross.” 

A great glory came upon you and you clutched 
for wonder at the choking neck of your little blouse. 

“ M-y Mother,” you said, “ m-y Mother is like 
the Flash of a White Wing across a Stormy 
Sea!” 

You started to say more, but with a wild war- 
whoop of amusement, Sam lost his balance and fell 
sprawling into the sand. “ Oh, what a funny 
Mother ! ” he shouted, but Ladykin jumped down 
on him furiously and began to kick him with her 
scarlet sandals. “ Hush ! hush ! ” she cried, “ Jack’s 
Mother is dead ! ” and then in an instant she had 
clambered back to your side again and snuggled 
99 


THE HAPPY-DAY 


her little soft girl-cheek close against yours, while 
with one tremulous hand she pointed way out be- 
yond the surf line where a solitary, snow-white gull 
swooped down into the Blue. “ Look ! ” she gasped, 
“ L-o-o-k ! ” and when you turned to her with a 
sudden gulping sob, she kissed you warm and sweet 
upon your lips. 

It was not a Father kiss with two tight arms and 
a scrunching pain. It was not a Grandmother- 
Lady kiss complimenting your clean face. It was 
not a Bruno-Clarice kiss, mute and wistful and 
lappy. There was no pain in it. There was no 
compliment. There was no doggish fealty. There 
was just sweetness. 

Then you looked straight at Ladykin, and Lady- 
kin looked straight at you, looked and looked and 
LOOKED, and you both gasped right out loud 
before the first miracle of your life, the Miracle of 
the Mating of Thoughts. Without a word of sug- 
gestion, without a word of explanation, you and 
Ladykin clasped hands and tiptoed stealthily off to 
the very edge of the water, and knelt down slushily 
in the sand, and stooped way over, oh, way, way 
over, with the cold waves squirting up your cuffs; 
and kissed two perfectly round floaty kisses out to 
the White Sea-Gull, and after a minute the White 
Gull rose in the sky, swirled round and round and 
round, stopped for a second, and then with a wild 
ioo 


THE HAPPY-DAY 


cry swooped down again into the blue — Once! 
Twice! and then with a great fountainy splash of 
wings rose high in the air like a white silk kite and 
went scudding off like mad into the Grayness, then 
into the Blackness, then into the Nothingness of the 
night. And you stayed behind on that pleasant, 
safe, sandy edge of things with all the sweetness 
gone from your lips, and nothing left you in all 
the world but the thudding of your heart, and a 
queer, sad, salty pucker on your tongue that gave 
you a thirst not so much for water as for life . 

Oh, you learned a great deal about living in those 
first few days and weeks and months at the Grand- 
mother-Lady’s house. 

You learned, for instance, that if you wanted to 
do things, Boys were best; but if you wanted to 
think things, then Girls were infinitely superior. 
You, yourself, were part Thinker and part Doer. 

Sam was a doer from start to finish, strong of 
limb, long of wind, sturdy of purpose. But Sam 
was certainly prosy in his head. Ladykin, on the 
contrary, had “ gray matter ” that jumped like a 
squirrel in its cage, and fled hither and yon, and 
turned somersaults, and leaped through hoops, and 
was altogether alert beyond description. But she 
could not do things. She could not stay in the nice 
ocean five minutes without turning blue. She 
could not climb a tree without falling and bumping 
IOI 


THE HAPPY-DAY 


her nose. She could not fight without getting mad. 
Out of these proven facts you evolved a beautiful 
theory that if Thinky-Girls could only be taught to 
do things, they would make the most perfect play- 
mates in all the wide, wide world. Yet somehow 
you never made a theory to improve Sam, though 
Sam’s inability to think invariably filled you with 
a very cross, unholy contempt for him, while Lady- 
kin’s inability to do only served to thrill you with the 
most delicious, sweet, puffy pride in yourself. 

Sam was very evidently a Person. Ladykin was 
a Feeling. You began almost at once to distin- 
guish between Persons and Feelings. Anything 
that straightened out your head was a Person. 
Anything that puckered up your heart was a Feel- 
ing. Your Father, you had found out, was a Per- 
son. The Grandmother-Lady was a Person. Sam 
was a Person. Sunshine was a Person. A Horse 
was a Person. A Chrysanthemum was a Person. 
But your Mother was a Feeling. And Ladykin was 
a Feeling. And Bruno-Clarice was a Feeling. 
And the Ocean Blue was a Feeling. And a Church 
Organ was a Feeling. And the Smell of a June 
Rose was a Feeling. Perhaps your Happy-Day 
was the biggest Feeling of All. 

Thursday, to be sure, came only once a week, but 
— such a Thursday! Even now, if you shut your 
eyes tight and gasp a quick breath, you can sense 
102 


THE HAPPY-DAY 


once more the sweet, crisp joy of fresh, starched 
clothes, and the pleasant, shiny jingle of new pen- 
nies in your small white cotton pockets. White? 
Yes; your Father had said that always on that 
day you should go like a little white Flag of Truce 
on an embassy to Fate. And Happiness? Could 
anything in the world make more for happiness 
than to be perfectly clean in the morning and per- 
fectly dirty at night, with something rather frisky 
to eat for dinner, and Sam and Ladykin invariably 
invited to supper? Your Happy-Day was your 
Sacristy, too. Nobody ever punished you on 
Thursday. Nobody was ever cross to you on 
Thursday. Even if you were very black-bad the 
last thing Wednesday night, you were perfectly, 
blissfully, lusciously safe until Friday morning. 

Oh, a Happy-Day was a very simple thing to 
manage compared with the terrible difficulties of 
being kind to everybody named “ Clarice.” There 
was nobody named Clarice! In all the town, in 
all the directory, in all the telephone books, you 
and Ladykin could not find a single person named 
Clarice. Once in a New York newspaper you read 
about a young Clarice-Lady of such and such a 
street who fell and broke her hip; and you took 
twenty shiny pennies of your money and bought a 
beautiful, hand-painted celluloid brush-holder and 
sent it to her ; but you never, never heard that it did 
103 


THE HAPPY-DAY 


her any good. You did not want your Father to be 
mad at you, but Lady kin reasoned you out of your 
possible worry by showing you how if you ever saw 
your Father again you could at least plant your 
feet firmly, fold your arms, puff out your chest, and 
affirm distinctly: “ Dear Father, I have never 
been cruel to any one named ‘ Clarice.’ ” Ladykin 
knew perfectly well how to manage it. Ladykin 
knew perfectly well how to manage everything. 

Sam was the stupid one. Sam took a certain 
pleasure in Bruno-Clarice, but he never realized 
that Bruno-Clarice was a sacred dog. Sam thought 
that it was very fine for you to have a Happy-Day, 
with Clean Clothes, and Ice-Cream, and Pennies, 
but he never almost burst with the wonder of the 
day. 

Sam thought that it was pleasant enough for you 
to have a dead Mother who was like “ the flash of 
a white wing across a stormy sea,” but he did 
not see any possible connection between that 
fact and stoning all the white sea-gulls in sight. 
Ladykin, on the contrary, told Sam distinctly that 
she ’d knock his head off if he ever hit a gull, but 
fortunately — or unfortunately — Ladykin’s aim 
was not so sure as Sam’s. It was you who had to 
stay behind on the beach and pommel more than 
half the life out of Sam while Ladykin, pink as a 
posy in her best muslin, scared to death of wet and 
104 


THE HAPPY-DAY 


cold, plunged out to her little neck in the chopping 
waves to rescue a quivering fluff of feathers that 
struggled broken-winged against the cruel, drown- 
ing water. “ Gulls are gulls ! ” persisted Sam with 
every blubbering breath. “Gulls are Mothers !” 
gasped Ladykin, staggering from the surf all 
drenched and dripping like a bursted water-pail. 
“Well, boy-gulls are gulls !” Sam screamed in a 
perfect explosion of outraged truth. But Ladykin 
defied him to the last. Through chattering teeth 
her vehement reassertion sounded like some horrid, 
wicked blasphemy : “ Nnnnnnnnnnnn-oo ! Bbb-o-y 
ggggg-ggulls are MMMMMM-Mothers too ! ” 
Then with that pulsing drench of feathers cuddled 
close to her breast, she struggled off alone to the 
house to have the Croup, while you and Sam went 
cheerily up the beach to find some shiners and some 
seaweed for your new gull hospital. Not till you 
were quite an old boy did you ever find out what 
became of that gull. Sacred Bruno-Clarice ate 
him. Ladykin, it seems, knew always what had 
happened to him, but she never dreamed of telling 
you till you were old enough to bear it. To Lady- 
kin, Truth out of season was sourer than straw- 
berries at Christmas time. 

Sam would have told you anything the very first 
second that he found it out. Sam was perfectly 
great for Truth. He could tell more Great Black 
105 


THE HAPPY-DAY 


Truths in one day than there were thunder-clouds 
in the whole hot summer sky. This quality made 
Sam just a little bit dangerous in a crowd. He was 
always and forever shooting people with Truths 
that he did n’t know were loaded. He was always 
telling the Grandmother-Lady, for instance, that her 
hair looked exactly like a wig. He was always tell- 
ing Ladykin that she smelled of raspberry jam. 
He was always telling you that he did n’t believe 
your Father really loved you. Oh, everything that 
Sam said was as straight and lank and honest as a 
lady’s hair when it ’s out of crimp. Nothing in the 
world could be straighter than that. 

But sometimes, when you had played sturdily 
with Sam for a good many hours, you used to coax 
Ladykin off all alone to the puffy, scorchy-looking 
smoke tree, where you could cuddle up on the rustic 
seat and rest your Honesty. And when you were 
thoroughly rested, you used to stretch your little 
arms behind your yawning face and beg: 

“ Oh, Ladykin, would n’t you, could n’t you 
please say something curly ? ” 

Ladykin’s mind seemed to curl perfectly natu- 
rally. The crimp of it never came out. Almost 
any time you could take her words that looked so 
little and tight, and unwind them and unwind them 
into yards and yards and yards of pleasant, magic 
meanings. 


106 


THE HAPPY-DAY 


There were no magic meanings in Sam’s words. 
Sam, for instance, could throw as many as a hun- 
dred stones into the water, yet when he got through 
he just lay down in the sand and groaned, “ Oh, 
how tired I am ! Oh, how tired lam!” But Lady- 
kin, after she ’d thrown only two stones — one that 
hit the beach, and one that hit you — would stand 
right up and declare that her arm was “ fo-witched.” 
Tired? No, not a bit of it, but “ fo-witched ! ” 
Had n’t she seen, had n’t you seen, had n’t every- 
body seen that perfectly awful sea-witch’s head that 
popped out of the wave just after she had thrown 
her first stone ? Oh, indeed, and it was n’t the first 
time either that she had been so frightened ! Once 
when she was sitting on the sand counting sea-shells, 
had n’t the Witch swooped right out of the water 
and grabbed her legs? So, now if you wanted to 
break the cruel spell, save Ladykin’s life, marry 
Ladykin, and live in a solid turquoise palace — 
where all the walls were papered with foreign pos- 
tage-stamps, and. no duplicates — you, not Sam, but 
you , you, chosen of all the world, must go down to 
the little harbor between the two highest, reariest 
rocks and stick a spiked stick through every wave 
that came in. There was no other way! Now 
you, yourself, might possibly have invented the 
witch, but you never, never would have thought of 
harpooning the waves and falling in and drown- 
107 


THE HAPPY-DAY 


ing your best suit, while Ladykin rested her 
arms. 

Yet in the enforced punishment of an early bed- 
time you were not bereaved, but lay in rapturous 
delight untangling the minutest detail of Ladykin’s 
words, till turquoise cities blazed like a turquoise 
flashlight across your startled senses, wonderful lit- 
tle princes and princesses kowtowed perpetually to 
royal Mother Ladykin and royal Father Yourself, 
and life-sized postage-stamps loomed so lusciously 
large that envelopes had to be pasted to the corners 
of stamps instead of stamps to the corners of en- 
velopes. And before you had half straightened out 
the whole thought, you were fast asleep, and then 
fast awake, and it was suddenly morning! Oh, it 
is very comforting to have a playmate who can say 
curly things. 

Sometimes, too, when Sam’s and Ladykin’s 
Mother had been rude to them about brushing 
their teeth or tracking perfectly good mud into 
the parlor, and Sam had gone off to ease his 
sorrow, seating hens or stoning cats, you and 
Ladykin would steal down to the gray rock on the 
beach to watch the white, soft, pleasant sea-gulls. 
There were times, you think, when Ladykin 
wished that her Mother was a sea-gull. Then you 
used to wonder and wonder about your own 
108 


THE HAPPY-DAY 


Mother, and tell Ladykin all over again about 
the creaky, black-oak library, and the smoky, 
smelly hearth-fire with the hurt red book, and 
the blue-flowered muslin sleeve beckoning and 
beckoning to you ; and Ladykin used to ex- 
plain to you how, very evidently, you were 
the only souvenir that your Father did not burn. 
With that thought in mind, you used to try and 
guess what could possibly have happened long ago 
on a Thursday to make a Happy-Day forever and 
ever. Ladykin said that of course it was something 
about “ Love,” but when you ran off to ask the 
Grandmother-Lady just exactly what Love was, 
the Grandmother-Lady only laughed and said 
that Love was a fever that came along a few 
years after chicken-pox and measles and scarlet 
fever. Ladykin was saucy about it. “ That may 
be true” Ladykin acknowledged, “but faint so!” 
Then you went and found Sam and asked him if 
he knew what Love was. Sam knew at once. 
Sam said that Love was the feeling that one 
had for mathematics. Now that was all bosh , for 
the feeling that you and Ladykin had for Mathe- 
matics would not have made a Happy-Day for a 
cow. 

But even if there were a great many things that 
you could not find out, it was a good deal of fun 
109 


THE HAPPY-DAY 


to grow up. Apart from a few stomach-aches and 
two or three gnawing pains in the calves of your 
legs, aging was a most alluring process. 

Springs, summers, autumns, winters, went hurt- 
ling over one another, till all of a sudden, without 
the slightest effort on your part, you were fifteen 
years old, Bruno-Clarice had grown to be a sober, 
industrious, middle-aged dog, Sam was idolatrously 
addicted to geometry, and Ladykin subscribed to a 
fashion magazine for the benefit of her paper dolls. 

Most astonishing of all, however, your Father 
had invited you to go to Germany and visit him. 
It was a glorious invitation. You were all athrill 
with the geography and love of it. Already your 
nostrils crinkled to the lure of tar and oakum. Al- 
ready your vision feasted on the parrot-colored 
crowds of Come-igrants and Go-igrants that hud- 
dled along the wharves with their eager, jabbering 
faces and their soggy, wadded feet. 

Oh, the prospect of the journey was a most beau- 
tiful experience, but when the actual Eve of De- 
parture came, the scissors of separation gleamed 
rather hard and sharp in the air, and you hunched 
your neck a little bit wincingly before the final 
crunching snip. That last evening was a dreadful 
evening. The Cook sat sobbing in the kitchen. 
The Grandmother-Lady’s eyes were red with sew- 
ing. The air was all heavy with goingawayness. 
no 


THE HAPPY-DAY 


To escape the strangle of it, you fled to the beach 
with Bruno-Clarice tagging in mournful excite- 
ment at your heels, his smutty nose all a-sniflf with 
the foreboding leathery smell of trunks and bags. 
There on the beach in a scoopy hollow of sand* 
backed up against the old gray rock were Sam and 
Ladykin. Sam’s round, fat face was fretted like 
a pug-dog’s, and Ladykin’s eyes were blinky-wet 
with tears. 

It was not a pleasant time to say good-by. It 
had been a beautiful, smooth-skied day, crisp and 
fresh and bright-colored as a “ Sunday supple- 
ment ” ; but now the clouds piled gray and crum- 
pled in the west like a poor stale, thrown-away 
newspaper, with just a sputtering blaze in one cor- 
ner like the kindling of a half-hearted match. 

“ Please be kind to Bruno-Clarice,” you began ; 
“ I shall miss you very much — very, very much. 
But I will come back — ” 

“ N — o, I do not think you will come back,” 
said Ladykin. “ You will go to Germany to live 
with your Father and your Play-Mother, and you 
will gargle all your words like a throat tonic till 
you don’t know how to be friends in English any 
more ; and even if you did come back Bruno-Clarice 
would bark at you, and I shall be married, and Sam 
will have a long, black beard.” 

Now you could have borne Ladykin’s marriage; 
in 


THE HAPPY-DAY 


you could even have borne Bruno-Clarice’s barking 
at you ; but you could not, simply could not bear the 
thought of Sam’s growing a long black beard with- 
out you. Even Ladykin with all her wonderful- 
ness sat utterly helpless before the terrible, unex- 
pected climax of her words. It was Sam who 
leaped into the breach. The clutch of his hand 
was like the grit of sand-paper. “Jack,” he stam- 
mered, “ Jack, I promise you — anyhow I won’t 
cut my beard until you come ! ” 

It was certainly only the thought of Sam’s faith- 
ful beard that sustained you on your rough, blue 
voyage to Germany. It was certainly only the 
thought of Sam’s faithful beard that rallied your 
smitten forces when you met your Father face to 
face and saw him reel back white as chalk against 
the silky shoulder of your Play-Mother, and hide 
his eyes behind the crook of his elbow. 

It is not pleasant to make people turn white as 
chalk, even in Germany. Worse yet, every day 
your Father grew whiter and whiter and whiter, 
and every day your pretty Play-Mother wrinkled 
her forehead more and more in a strange, hurty 
sort of trouble. Never once did you dare think of 
Ladykin. Never once did you dare think of Bruno- 
Clarice. You just named all your upper teeth 
“ Sam,” and all your lower teeth “ Sam,” and 
1 12 


THE HAPPY-DAY 


ground them into each other all day long — “ Sam ! 
Sam ! Sam ! ” over and over and over. There were 
also no Happy-Days in Germany, and nobody ever 
spoke of Clarice. 

You were pretty glad at last after a month when 
your Father came to you with his most beautiful 
face and his most loving hands, and said : 

“ Little Boy Jack, there is no use in it. You 
have got to go away again. You are a wound that 
will not heal. It is your Dear Mother’s eyes. It 
is your Dear Mother’s mouth. It is your Dear 
Mother’s smile. God forgive me, but I cannot bear 
it ! I am going to send you away to school in Eng- 
land.” 

You put your finger cautiously up to your eyes 
and traced their round, firm contour. Your 
Mother’s eyes? They felt like two heaping tea- 
spoonfuls of tears. Your Mother’s mouth? Des- 
perately you poked it into a smile. “ Going to 
send me away to school in England ? ” you stam- 
mered. “ Never mind. Sam will not cut his beard 
until I come.” 

“What?” cried your Father in a great voice. 
“W-h-a-t?” 

But you pretended that you had not said any- 
thing, because it was boy-talk and your Father 
would not have understood it. 

Never, never, never had you seen your Father 


THE HAPPY-DAY 


so suffering; yet when he took you in his arms and 
raised your face to his and quizzed you : “ Little 

Boy Jack, do you love me? Do you love me?” 
you scanned him out of your Mother’s made-over 
eyes and answered him out of your Mother’s made- 
over mouth: 

“ N — o! N — o! I don't love you ! ” 

And he jumped back as though you had knifed 
him, and then laughed out loud as though he were 
glad of the pain. 

“ But I ask you this,” he persisted, and the shine 
in his eyes was like a sunset glow in the deep woods, 
and the touch of his hands would have lured you 
into the very heart of the flame. “ It is not prob- 
able,” he said, “ that your Dear Mother’s child and 
mine will go through Life without knowing Love. 
When your Love-Time comes, if you understand 
all Love’s tragedies then , and forgive me, will you 
send me a message? ” 

“ Oh, yes,” you cried out suddenly. “ Oh, yes ! 
Oh, yes ! Oh, yes ! ” and clung to him frantically 
with your own boyish hands, and kissed him with 
your Mother’s mouth. But you did not love him. 
It was your Mother’s mouth that loved him. 

So you went away to school in England and grew 
up and up and up some more; but somehow this 
latter growing up was a dull process without savor, 
and the years went by as briefly and inconsequently 
114 


THE HAPPY-DAY 


as a few dismissing sentences in a paragraph. 
There were plenty of people to work with and play 
with, but almost no one to think with, and your 
hard-wrought book knowledge faded to nothing- 
ness compared to the three paramount convictions 
of your youthful experience, namely, that neither 
coffee nor ocean nor Life tasted as good as it 
smelled. 

And then when you were almost twenty-one you 
met “ Clarice ” ! 

It was a Christmas supper party in a cafe. 
Some one looked up suddenly and called the name 
“Clarice! Clarice !” and when your startled eyes 
shot to the mark and saw her there in her easy, 
dashing, gorgeous beauty, something in your brain 
curdled, and all the lonesomeness, all the mystery, 
all the elusiveness of Life pounded suddenly in 
your heart like a captured Will-o’-the-Wisp. 
“ Clarice? ” Here, then, was the end of your jour- 
ney? The eternal kindness? The flash of a white 
wing across your stormy sea ? “ Clarice ! ” And 

you looked across unbidden into her eyes and smiled 
at her a gaspy, astonished smile that brought the 
strangest light into her face. 

Oh, but Clarice was very beautiful! Never had 
you seen such a type. Her hair was black and sol- 
emn as crape. Her eyes were bright and noisy as 
jet. Her heart was barren as a blot of ink. And 
115 


THE HAPPY-DAY 


she took your dreamy, paper- white boy life and 
scourged it like a tongue of flame across a field of 
Easter lilies! 

And when the wonder of the flame was gone, 
you sat aghast in your room among the charred, 
scorched fragments of your Youth. The thirst for 
death was very strong upon you, and the little, long, 
narrow cup of your revolver gleamed very brim- 
ming full of death’s elixir. Even the June-time 
could not save you. Your Mother’s name was an 
agony on your lips. The frenzied reiteration of 
your thoughts scraped on your brain like a sledge 
on gravel. You Would drink very deep, you 
thought, of your little slim cup of death. Yet the 
thing that was tortured within you was scarcely 
Love, and you had no message of understanding 
for your Father. Just with wrecked life, wrecked 
faith, wrecked courage, you huddled at your desk, 
catching your breath for a second before you should 
reach out your fretted fingers for the little cool 
cunning, toy hand of Death. 

“ Once again,” you said to yourself, “ once again 
I will listen to the children’s voices in the garden. 
Once again I will lure the smell of June roses into 
my heart.” The children prattled and passed. 
Your hand reached out and fumbled. Once more 
you shut your scalding eyes, hunched up your shoul- 
ders, and breathed in like an ultimate tide the rav- 
116 


THE HAPPY-DAY 


ishing sweetness of the June — one breath, another, 
another — longer — longer. Oh, God in Heaven, 
if one could only die of such an anesthetic — 
smothered with sweetbrier, spiced with saffron, 
buried in bride roses. Die? Your wild hand 
leaped to the task and faltered stricken before the 
strange, grim fact that blazed across your conscious- 
ness. It was Thursday. It was your “ Happy- 
Day ! ” Your Father’s words came pounding back 
like blows into your sore brain! Your “ Happy- 
Day ! ” “ No cruelty must ever defame it, no mal- 

ice, no gross bitterness ! ” Somewhere in air or 
sky or sea there was a Mother-Woman who must 
not be hurt. Your “ Happy-Day ? ” HAPPY- 
DAY? Rage and sorrow broke like a fearful 
storm across your senses, and you put down your 
head and cried like a child. 

Tears? Again you felt on your lips that queer, 
sad, salty pucker, that taste of the sea that gave 
you a thirst not so much for water as for Life. 
Life ? Life? The thought thrilled through you 
like new nerves. Your ashy pulses burst into 
flame. Your dull heart jumped. Your vision 
woke. Your memory quickened. You saw the 
ocean, blue, blue, blue before you. You saw a 
small, rude boy lie sprawling in the sand. You 
saw a little girl’s face, wild with wonder, tremulous 
with sweetness. You felt again the flutter of a 
ii 7 


THE HAPPY-DAY 


kiss against your cheek. The little girl who — un- 
derstood. Your salt lips puckered into a smile, 
and the smile ran back like a fuse into the inher- 
ent happiness of your heart. Sam? Lady kin? 
Home? You began to laugh! Haggard, harried, 
wrecked, ruined, you began to laugh! Then, fal- 
tering like a hysterical girl, you staggered down 
the stairs, out of the house, along the streets to the 
cable office, and sent a message to Sam. 

“ How long is your beard ? ” the message said. 
“How long is your beard?” Just that silly, 
magic message across miles and miles and miles of 
waves and seaweeds. How the great cable must 
have simpered with the foolishness of it. How the 
pink coral must have chuckled. How the big, tin- 
foiled fishes must have wondered. 

You did not wait for an answer. What answer 
was there? You could picture Sam standing in 
stupefied awkwardness before the amazing noth- 
ingness of such a message. But Ladykin would re- 
member. Oh, yes, Ladykin would remember. You 
could see her peering past Sam’s shoulder and 
snatching out suddenly for the fluttering paper. 
Ladykin would remember. What were six years? 

Joy sang in your heart like a purr of a sea-shell. 
The blue blur of ocean, the dear green smell of 
mignonette, the rush of wind through the poplar 
trees were tonic memories to you. You did not 
118 


THE HAPPY-DAY 


wait to pack your things. You did not wait to 
notify your Father. You sped like a wild boy to 
the first wharf, to the first steamer that you could 
find. 

The week’s ocean voyage went by like a year. 
The silly waves dragged on the steamer like a tired 
child on the skirts of its mother. Haste raged in 
your veins like a fever. You wanted to throw all 
the fat, -heavy passengers overboard. You wanted 
to swim ahead with a towing rope in your 
teeth. You wanted to kill the Captain when he 
stuttered. You wanted to flay the cook for serving 
an extra course for dinner. Yet all the while the 
huge machinery throbbed in rhythm, “ Time will 
pass. It always does. It always does. It always 
does .” 

And then at last you stood again on your Native 
Land, alive, well, vital, at home ! 

With the sensation of an unbroken miracle, you 
found your way again to the little Massachusetts 
sea town, along the peaceful village walk to the big 
brown house that turned so bleakly to the street. 
There on the steps, wonder of wonders, you found 
two elderly people, Bruno-Clarice and the Grand- 
mother-Lady, and your knees gave out very sud- 
denly and you sank down beside Bruno-Clarice and 
smothered the bark right out of him. 

“ Good lack ! ” cried the Grandmother-Lady, 
1 19 


THE HAPPY-DAY 


“ Good lack!” and made so much noise that Sam 
himself came running like mad from the next 
house; and though he had no beard, you liked him 
very much and shook and shook his hand until he 
squealed. 

With the Grandmother-Lady plying you with 
questions, and Sam feeling your muscle, and Bruno- 
Clarice trying to crawl into your lap like a pug-dog 
baby, it was almost half an hour before you had a 
chance to ask, 

“ Where is Ladykin ? ” 

“ She ’s down on the beach,” said Sam. “ I ’ll 
go and help you find her.” 

You looked at Sam speculatively. “ I ’ll give 
you ten dollars if you won’t,” you said. 

Sam considered the matter gravely before he be- 
gan to grin. “ I would n’t think of charging you 
more than five,” he acquiesced. 

So you went off with Bruno-Clarice hobbling 
close at your heels to find Ladykin for yourself. 
When you saw her she was perched up on the very 
top of the huddly gray rock playing tinkle tunes on 
her mandolin, and you stole up so quietly behind 
her that she did not see you till you were close be- 
side her. 

Then she turned very suddenly and looked down 
upon you and pretended that she did not know 
you, with her color coming and going all luminous 
120 


THE HAPPY-DAY 


and intermittent like a pink and white flashlight 
In six years you had not seen such a wonderful 
playmatey face. 

“ Who are you? ” she asked. “ Who are you? ” 

“I am * Little Boy Jack’ come back to marry 
you,” you began, but something in the wistful, shy 
girl-tenderness of her face and eyes choked your 
bantering words right off in your throat. 

“ Yes, Ladykin,” you said, “ I have come home, 
and I am very tired, and I am very sad, and I am 
very lonesome, and I have not been a very good 
boy. But please be good to me! I am so lone- 
some I cannot wait to make love to you. Oh, 
please , please love me n-o-w. I need you to love 
me N-O-W!” 

Ladykin frowned. It was not a cross frown. 
It was just a sort of a cosy corner for her thoughts. 
Surprise cuddled there, and a sorry feeling, and a 
great tenderness. 

“ You have not been a very good boy? ” she re- 
peated after you. 

The memory of a year crowded blackly upon 
you. “ No,” you said, “ I have not been a very 
good boy, and I am very suffering-sad. But please 
\ love me, and forgive me. No one has ever loved 
me!” 

The surprise and the sorry feeling in Ladykin’s 
forehead crowded together to make room for some- 


121 


THE HAPPY-DAY 


thing that was just womanliness. She began to 
smile. It was the smile of a hurt person when the 
opiate first begins to overtake the pain. 

“ Oh, I ’m sure it was an accidental badness,” 
she volunteered softly. “ If I were accidentally 
bad, you would forgive me, wouldn’t you? ” 

“ Oh, yes, yes, yes,” you stammered, and reached 
up your lonesome hands to her. 

“ Then you don’t have to make love,” she whis- 
pered. “ It ’s all made,” and slipped down into 
your arms. 

But something troubled her, and after a minute 
she pushed you away and tried to renounce you. 

“ But it is not Thursday,” she sobbed ; “ it is 
Wednesday; and my name is not ‘Clarice’; it is 
Ladykin.” 

Then all the boyishness died out of you — the 
sweet, idle reveries, the mystic responsibilities. 
You shook your Father’s dream from your eyes, 
and squared your shoulders for your own realities. 

“ A Man must make his own Happy-Day,” 
you cried, “ and a Man must choose his own 
Mate ! ” 

Before your vehemence Ladykin winced back 
against the rock and eyed you fearsomely. 

“ Oh, I will love you and cherish you,” you 
pleaded. 

But Ladykin shook her head. “ That is not 
122 


THE HAPPY-DAY 


enough,” she whispered. There was a kind of holy 
scorn in her eyes. 

Then a White Gull flashed like an apparition be- 
fore your sight. Ladykin’s whole figure drooped, 
her cheek paled, her little mouth quivered, her 
vision narrowed. There with her eyes on the White 
Gull and your eyes fixed on hers, you saw her shy 
thoughts journey into the Future. You saw her 
eyes smile, sadden, brim with tears, smile again, 
and come homing back to you with a timid, glad 
surprise as she realized that your thoughts too had 
gone all the long journey with her. 

She reached out one little hand to you. It was 
very cold. 

“ If I should pass like the flash of a white wing,” 
she questioned, “ would you be true to me — and 
mine ? ” 

The Past, the Present, the Future rushed over 
you in tumult. Your lips could hardly crowd so 
big a vow into so small a word. “ Oh, YES, YES, 
YES ! ” you cried. 

In reverent mastery you raised her face to yours. 
“ A Man- must make his own Happy-Day,” you re- 
peated. “A Man must make his own Happy- 
Day!” 

Timorously, yet assentingly, she came back to 
your arms. The whisper of her lips against your 
ear was like the flutter of a rose petal. 

123 


THE HAPPY-DAY 


“ It will be Wednesday, then,” she said, “ for us 
and — ours.” 

Clanging a strident bell across the magic stillness 
of the garden, Sam bore down upon you like a 
steam-engine out of tune. 

“ Oh, I say,” he shouted, “ for heaven’s sake cut 
it out and come to supper.” 

The startled impulse of your refusal faded before 
the mute appeal in Ladykin’s eyes. 

“ All right,” you answered ; “ but first I must go 
and cable ‘ love ’ to my Father.” 

“ Oh, hurry ! ” cried Ladykin. Her word was 
crumpled and shy as a kiss. 

“ Oh, hurry ! ” cried Sam. His thought was 
straight and frank as a knife and fork. 

Joy sang in your heart like a prayer that rhymed. 
Your eager heart was pounding like a race horse. 
The clouds in the sky were scudding to sunset. 
The surf on the beach seemed all out of breath. 
The green meadow path to the village stretched like 
the paltriest trifle before a man’s fleet running 
pace. 

“ But I can’t hurry,” you said, for Bruno-Clarice 
came poking his grizzled old nose into your hand. 
“ Oh, wait for me,” he seemed to plead. “ Oh, 
please, please wait for me.” 


124 


THE RUNAWAY ROAD 



THE RUNAWAY ROAD 



jHE Road ran spitefully up a steep, 
hot, rocky, utterly shadeless hill, 
and then at the top turned sud- 
denly in a flirty little green loop, 
and looked back, and called “ Fol- 
low me ! ” 

Would n’t you have considered that a dare? 

The Girl and the White Pony certainly took it 
as such, and proceeded at once to “ follow,” though 
the White Pony stumbled clatteringly on the rolling 
stones, and the Girl had to cling for dear life to the 
rocking pommels of her saddle. 

It was a cruel climb, puff — pant — scramble — 
dust — glare — every step of the way, but when 
the two adventurers really reached the summit at 
last, a great dark chestnut-tree loomed up for shade, 
every sweet-smelling breeze in the world was there 
to welcome them, and the whole green valley below 
stretched out before them in the shining, woodsy 
wonder of high noon and high June. 

You know, yourself, just how the world looks 
and feels and smells at high noon of a high June! 

127 




THE RUNAWAY ROAD 


Even a pony stands majestically on the summit of 
a high hill — neck arched, eyes rolling, mane blow- 
ing, nostrils quivering. Even a girl feels a tug of 
power at her heart. 

And still the Road cried “Follow me!” though 
it never turned its head again in doubt or coquetry. 
It was a kind-looking Road now, all gracious and 
sweet and tender, with rustly green overhead, and 
soft green underfoot, and the pleasant, buzzing 
drone of bees along its clove red edges. 

“ We might just as well follow it and see,” ar- 
gued the Girl, and the White Pony took the sugges- 
tion with a wild leap and cantered eagerly along 
the desired way. 

It was such an extraordinarily lonesome Road 
that you could scarcely blame it for picking up com- 
panionship as best it might. There was stretch 
after stretch of pasture, and stretch after stretch 
of woodland, and stretch after stretch of black- 
stumped clearing — with never a house to cheer it, 
or a human echo to break its ghostly stillness. Yet 
with all its isolation and remoteness the landscape 
had that certain vibrant, vivid air of self-conscious- 
ness that thrills you with an uncanny sense of an 
invisible presence — somewhere. It's just a trick 
of June! 

Tramps, pirates, even cannibals, seemed de- 
128 


THE RUNAWAY ROAD 


liciously imminent The Girl remembered reading 
once of a lonely woman bicyclist who met a run- 
away circus elephant at the turn of a country road. 
Twelve miles from home is a long way off to have 
anything happen. 

Her heart began, to quicken with the joyous sort 
of fear that is one of the prime sweets of youth. 
It ’ s only when fear reaches your head that it hurts. 
The loneliness, the mystery, the uncertainty, were 
tonic to her. The color spotted in her cheeks. Her 
eyes narrowed defensively to every startling detail 
of woods or turf. Her ears rang with the sudden, 
new acuteness of her hearing. She felt as though 
she and the White Pony were stalking right across 
the heartstrings of the earth. Once the White 
Pony caught his foot and sent a scared sob into her 
throat. 

Oh, everything was magic ! A little brown rabbit 
reared up in the Road as big as a kangaroo, and 
beckoned her with his ears. A red-winged black- 
bird bulky as an eagle trumpeted a swamp-secret 
to her as he passed. A tiny chipmunk in the wall 
loomed like a lion in his lair, and sent a huge rock 
crashing like an avalanche into the field. The 
whole green and blue world seemed tingling with 
toy noises, made suddenly big. 

The White Pony's mouth was frothing with the 
9 129 


THE RUNAWAY ROAD 


curb. The White Pony’s coat was reeking wet with 
noon and nervousness, but the Girl sat tense and 
smiling and important in her saddle, as though just 
once for all time she was the only italicized word in 
the Book of Life. 

“ It ’s just the kind of a road that I like to travel 
alone,” she gasped, a little breathlessly, “ but if I 
were engaged and my man let me do it, I should 
consider him — careless.” 

That was exactly the sort of Road it was ! 

Yet after three or four miles the White Pony 
shook all the skittishness out of his feet, and set- 
tled down to a zigzag, browsing-clover gait, and the 
Girl relaxed at last, and sat loosely to ease her own 
muscles, and slid the bridle trustingly across the 
White Pony’s neck. 

Then she began to sing. Never in all her life 
had she sung outside the restricting cage of house 
or church. A green and blue loneliness on a June 
day is really the only place in the world that is big 
enough for singing! In dainty ballad, in impas- 
sioned hymn, in opera, in anthem, the Girl’s voice, 
high and sweet and wild as a boy’s, rang out in flut- 
tering tremolo. Over and over again, as though 
half unconscious of the words, but enraptured with 
the melody, she dwelt at last on that dream -song of 
every ecstatic young soul who tarries for a moment 
on the edge of an unfocused exultation : 

130 


THE RUNAWAY ROAD 


The King of Love my Shepherd is 
Whose Goodness faileth never, 

I nothing lack if I am his 
And he is mine f-o-r-e-v-e-r! 

Forever ! Is mine f-o-r-e-v-e-r! 

Her pulsing, passionate crescendo came echoing 
back to her from a gray granite hillside, and sent a 
reverent thrill of power across her senses. 

Then — suddenly — into her rhapsody broke the 
astonishing, harsh clash and clatter of a hay-rake. 
The White Pony lurched, stood stock-still, gave a 
hideous snort of terror, grabbed the bit in his teeth, 
and bolted like mad on and on and on and on till 
a quick curve in the Road dashed him into the 
very lap of a tiny old gray farmhouse that com- 
pletely blocked the way. 

In another second he would have stumbled across 
the threshold and hurled his rider precipitously into 
the front hall if she had not at that very second re- 
covered her “ yank-hold ” on his churning mouth 
and wrenched him back so hard that any animal but 
a horse would have sat down. 

Then the girl straightened up very tremblingly 
in her saddle and said “ O — h ! ” 

Some one had to say something, for there in the 
dooryard close beside her were an Artist, a Bossy, 
and a White Bulldog, who all instantaneously, 
without the slightest cordiality or greeting, stopped 

131 


THE RUNAWAY ROAD 


whatever they were doing and began to stare at 
her. 

Now it ’s all very well to go dashing like mad 
into a person’s front yard on a runaway horse. 
Anybody could see that you did n’t do it on pur- 
pose; but when at last you have stopped dashing, 
what are you going to do next, particularly when 
the Road doesn’t go any farther? Shall you say, 
“ Is n’t this a pleasant summer ? ” or “ What did 
you really like best at the theater last winter? ” If 
you gallop out it looks as though you were fright- 
ened. If you amble out, you might hear some one 
laugh behind your back, which is infinitely worse 
than being grabbed on the stairs. 

The situation was excessively awkward. And 
the Artist evidently was not clever in conversational 
emergencies. 

The Girl straightened her gray slouch hat. 
Then she ran the cool metal butt of her riding- 
whip back and forth under the White Pony’s swel- 
tering mane. Then she swallowed very hard once 
or twice and remarked inanely : 

“ Did the Road go right into the house? ” 

“ Yes,” said the Artist, with a nervous blue dab at 
his canvas. 

The Girl’s ire rose at his churlishness. “If that 
is so,” she announced, “ if the Road really went 
132 


THE RUNAWAY ROAD 


right into the house, I ’ll just wait here a minute 
till it comes out again.’* 

But the Artist never smiled an atom to make 
things easier, though the Bossy began to tug most 
joyously at his chain, and the White Bulldog rolled 
over and over with delight. 

The Girl would have given anything now to es- 
cape at full speed down the Road along which she 
had come, but escape of that sort had suddenly as- 
sumed the qualities of a panicky, ignominious re- 
treat, so she parried for time by riding right up 
behind the Artist and watching him change a per- 
fectly blue canvas sky into a regular tornado. 

“ Oh, do you think it ’s going to rain as hard 
as that?” she teased. “Perhaps I’d better settle 
down here until the storm is over.” 

But the Artist never smiled or spoke. He just 
painted and sniffed as though he worked by steam, 
and when his ears had finally grown so crimson that 
apoplexy seemed impending, she took pity on his 
miserable embarrassment and backed even the 
shadow of her pony out of his sight. Then with a 
desperate effort at perfect ease she remarked: 

“ Well — I guess I ’ll ride round to your back 
door. Perhaps the Road came out that way and 
went on without me.” 

But though she and the White Pony hunted in 

133 


THE RUNAWAY ROAD 


every direction through white birch and swaying 
alders, they found no possible path by which the 
Road could have escaped, and were obliged at last 
to return with some hauteur, and make as dignified 
an exit as possible from the scene. 

The Artist bowed with stiff relief at their depar- 
ture, but the White Bulldog preceded them with 
friendly romps and yells, and the Bossy pulled up 
his iron hitching stake and chain and came clanking 
after them with furious bounds and jingles. 

No one but the White Pony would have stood 
the racket for a moment, and even the White Pony 
began to feel a bit staccato in his feet. The Girl 
kept her saddle like a circus rider, but the amuse- 
ment on her face was just a trifle studied. It was 
a fine procession, clamor and all, with the Bulldog 
scouting ahead, the White Pony following skit- 
tishly, and the Bossy see-sawing behind, clanking a 
dungeon chain that left a cloud of dust as far as you 
could see. 

It must have startled the Youngish Man who 
loomed up suddenly at a bend of the Road and 
caught the wriggling Bulldog in his arms. 

“ Who comes here ? ” he cried with a regular 
war-whoop of a challenge. “Who comes here?” 

“Just a lady and a bossy,” said the Girl, as she 
reined in the Pony abruptly, and sent the Bossy 
caroming off into the bushes. 

134 


THE RUNAWAY ROAD 


“ But it ’s my brother’s Bossy,” protested the 
Youngish Man. 

“ Oh, no, it is n’t,” the Girl explained a little 
wearily. “ It ’s mine now. It chose between us.” 

The Youngish Man eyed her with some amuse- 
ment. 

“ Did you really see my brother at the house ? ” 
he probed. 

The Girl nodded, flushing. It was very hot, and 
she was beginning to feel just a wee bit faint and 
hungry and irritable. 

“ Yes, I saw your brother,” she reiterated, “ but 
I did n’t seem to care for him. I rode by mistake 
right into the picture he was painting. There ’s 
probably paint all over me. It was very awkward, 
and he did n’t do a thing to make it easier. I 
abominate that kind of person. If a man can’t do 
anything else he can always ask you if you would n’t 
like a drink of water ! ” She scowled indignantly. 
“ It was the Road’s fault anyway! I was just ex- 
ploring, and the Road cried 4 Follow me,’ and I fol- 
lowed — a little faster than I meant to — and the 
Road ran right into your house and shut the door. 
Oh, slammed the door right in my face! ” 

“Would you like a drink of water, now?” sug- 
gested the Youngish Man. 

“ No, I thank you,” said the Girl, with stubborn 
dignity, and then weakened to the alluring offer 
135 


THE RUNAWAY ROAD 


with “ But my White Pony it very cruelly 
thirsty.” 

Both adventurers looked pretty jaded with heat 
and dust. 

The Youngish Man led the way into a tiny, pun- 
gent wood-path that ended in a gurgling spring-hole, 
where the White Pony nuzzled his nose with deep- 
breathed, dripping satisfaction, while the Girl kept 
to her saddle and looked down on the Youngish 
Man with frank interest. 

He looked very picturesque and brown and clever 
in his khaki suit with a game bag slung across his 
shoulder. 

“ You ’re not a hunter,” she exclaimed impul- 
sively. “You’re not a hunter — because you 
have n’t any gun.” 

“ No,” said the Man, “ I ’m a collector.” 

The Girl cried out with pleasure and clapped her 
hands. “ A collector ? — oh, goody ! So am I ! 
What do you collect? Minerals? Oh — dear! 
Mine is lots more interesting. I collect adven- 
tures.” 

“ Adventures? ” The Man made no slightest ef- 
fort to conceal his amused curiosity. “ Adven- 
tures? Now I call that a jolly thing to collect. Is 
it a good country to work in? And what have you 
found? ” 

The Girl smiled at him appreciatively — a little 
136 


THE RUNAWAY ROAD 


flitting, whimsical sort of smile, and commenced to 
rummage in the blouse of her white shirt-waist, 
from which she finally produced a small, red-cov- 
ered notebook. She fluttered its diminutive pages 
for a second, and then began to laugh: 

“ You ’d better sit down if you really want to 
hear what I ’ve found.” 

The Man dropped comfortably into place beside 
the spring and watched her. She was very watch- 
able. Some people have to be beautiful to rivet 
your attention. Some people don't have to be. 
It ’s all a matter of temperament. Her hair was 
very, very brown, though, and her eyes were deep 
and wide and hazel, and the red in her cheeks came 
and went with every throb of her heart. 

“ Of course,” she explained apologetically, “ of 
course I have n’t found a lot of things yet — I Ve 
only been working at it a little while. But I Ve 
collected a ‘ Runaway Accident with the Rural 
Free-Delivery Man.’ It was awfully scary and in- 
teresting. And I Ve collected a ‘ Den of Little 
Foxes Down in the Woods Back of My House,’ and 
* Two Sunrises with a Crazy Woman who Thinks 
that the Sun Can’t Get Up Until She Does,’ and 
I ’ve collected a ‘ Country Camp-Meeting all Halle- 
lujahs and By Goshes,’ and a ‘ Circus Where I 
Spent All Day with the Snake-Charmer,’ and a 
‘ Midnight Ride Alone through the Rosedale Woods 
137 


THE RUNAWAY ROAD 


in a Thunder-Storm/ Of course, as I say, I 
have n’t found a lot of things yet, but then it ’s only 
the middle of June and I have two more weeks’ va- 
cation yet.” 

The Man put back his head and laughed, but it 
was a pleasant sort of laugh that flooded all the 
stern lines in his face. 

“ I ’m sure I never thought of making a regular 
business of collecting adventures,” he admitted, 
“ but it certainly is a splendid idea. But are n’t 
you ever afraid ? ” he asked. “ Are n’t you ever 
afraid, for instance, riding round on a lonesome trip 
like this? ” 

The Girl laughed. “ Yes,” she acknowledged, 
“ I ’m often afraid of — squirrels — and falling 
twigs — and black-looking stumps. I ’m often 
afraid of toy noises and toy fears — but I never 
saw a real fear in all my life. Even when you 
jumped up in the Road I wasn’t afraid of you — 
because you are a gentleman — and — gentlemen 
are my friends.” 

“ Have you many friends ? ” asked the Man. The 
question seemed amusingly justifiable. “ You look 
to me about eighteen. Girls of your age are usually 
too busy collecting Love to collect anything else — • 
even ideas. Have you collected any Love?” 

The Girl threw out her hands in joking protest. 
“ Collected any Love ? Why, I don’t even know 
138 


THE RUNAWAY ROAD 


what Love looks like ! Maybe what I ’d collect 
would be — poison ivy.” Her eyes narrowed a lit- 
tle. Her voice quivered the merest trifle. 
“ There ’s a Boy at Home — who talks — a little 
— about it. But how can I tell that it ’s Love ? ” 
Her sudden vehemency startled him. “ Where 
is ‘ Home ’ ? ” he asked. 

For immediate answer the Girl slipped down from 
the White Pony’s back, and loosened the saddle 
creakingly before she helped herself to a long, drip- 
ping draught from the birch cup that hung just over 
the spring. 

“ You ’re nice to talk to,” she acknowledged, 
“ and almost no one is nice to talk to. It ’s a whole 
year since I ’ve talked right out to any one ! Where 
do I live? Well, my headquarters are in New 
York, but my heartquarters are over at Rosedale. 
There ’s quite a difference, you know ! ” 

“ Yes,” said the Man, “ I remember — there used 
to — be — quite a difference. But how did you 
ever happen to think of collecting adventures? ” 
The girl pulled at the White Pony’s mane for 
a long, hesitating moment, then she turned and 
looked searchingly into the Man’s face. She very 
evidently liked what she saw. 

“ I collect adventures because I am lonesome ! ” 
Her voice shook a little, but her eyes were frankly 
untroubled. “ I collect adventures because the life 
139 


THE RUNAWAY ROAD 


that interests me does n’t happen to come to me, and 
I have to go out and search for it ! — I’m com- 
panion all the year to a woman who does n’t know 
right from wrong in any dear, big sense, but who 
could define propriety and impropriety to you till 
your ears split. And all her friends are just like 
her. They haven’t any mental muscle to them. 
It ’s just dress and etiquette, dress and etiquette, 
dress and etiquette! So I have to live all alone 
in my head, and think and think and think, 
till my poor brain churns and overlaps like a surf 
without any shore. Do you know what I mean? 
Then when my June vacation comes, I run right off 
to Rosedale and collect all the adventures I possi- 
bly can to take back with me for the long dreary 
year. Things to think about, you know, when I 
have to sit up at night giving medicine, or when I 
have to mend heavy black silk clothes, or when the 
dinners are so long that I could scream over the 
extra delay of a salad course. So I make June a 
sort of pranky, fancy-dress party for my soul. Do 
you know what I mean ? ” 

“ Yes, I know what you mean,” said the Man. 
“ I know just what you mean. You mean you ’re 
eighteen. That ’s the whole of it You mean that 
there ’s no fence to your pasture, no bottom to your 
cup, no crust to your bread. You mean that you 
can’t sleep at night for the pounding of your heart 
140 


THE RUNAWAY ROAD 


You mean most of all that there ’s no limit to your 
vision. You Ye inordinately keen after life. 
That ’s all. You ’ll get over it ! ” 

“I won't get over it !” There was fire in the 
Girl’s eyes and she drew her breath sharply. “ I 
say I won't get over it ! There ’s nothing on earth 
that could stale me! If I live to be a hundred I 
sha’n’t wither ! — why, how could I ? ” 

Buoyant, blooming, aquiver with startled emo- 
tions, she threw out her hands with a passionate 
gesture of protest. 

The Man shook his shoulders and jumped up. 
“ Perhaps you ’re right,” he muttered. “ Perhaps 
you are the kind that won’t ever grow old. If you 
are — Heaven help you! Youth’s nothing but a 
wound, anyway. Do you want to be a wound that 
never heals ? ” He laughed stridently. 

Then the Girl began to fumble through sudden 
tears at the buckles of her saddle. Her growing 
hunger and faintness and the heat of the day were 
telling on her. 

“ You must think me a crazy fool,” she confessed, 
“the way -I have plunged into personalities. Why, 
I could go a whole year with an alien running-mate 
and never breathe a word or a sigh about myself, 
but with some people — the second you see them 
you know they are part of your chord. Chord is 
the only term in music that I understand, and I urn 
141 


THE RUNAWAY ROAD 


derstand that as though I had made the word my- 
self.” She tried to laugh. “ Now I ’m going 
home! I’ve had a good time. You seem almost 
like a friend. I ’ve never had a talky friend.” 

And she was in her saddle and half-way down 
the wood-path before his mind quickened to cry out 
“ Stop! Wait a minute! ” 

A little out of breath he caught up with her, and 
stood for a moment like an embarrassed schoolboy, 
though his face in the sunlight was as old as young 
forty. 

“ I ’m afraid you have n’t had much of an ad- 
venture this morning,” he volunteered whimsically. 
“If you really want an adventure why don’t you 
come back to the house and have dinner with my 
brother and me ? There ’s no one else there. 
Think how it would tease my brother! You’re 
twelve or fifteen miles from home, and it ’s already 
two o’clock and very hot. My brother has done 
some pictures that are going to be talked about next 
winter, and I — I ’ve got rather a conspicuous posi- 
tion ahead of me in Washington. Would n’t it 
amuse you a little bit afterward, if any one spoke 
of us, to remember our little farmhouse dinner to- 
day? — Would you be afraid to come? ” His last 
question was very direct. 

A look came into the Girl’s eyes that was very 
good for a man to see. 


142 


THE RUNAWAY ROAD 


“ Why, of course I would n’t be afraid to come,” 
she said. “ Gentlemen are my friends.” 

But she was shy about going, just the same, with 
a certain frank, boyish shyness that only served to 
emphasize' the general artlessness of her verve. 

With a quick dive into the bushes the Man col- 
lared the Bossy and transferred his clanking chain 
to the bit of the astonished White Pony. 

“ Now you ’ve got to come,” he laughed up at 
her, and the whole party started back for the tiny 
old gray farmhouse where the Artist greeted them 
with sad concern. 

“ I ’ve brought Miss Girl back to have dinner 
with us,” announced the Pony-leader cheerfully, 
relying on his brother’s serious nature to overlook 
any strangeness of nomenclature. “ You evidently 
did n’t remember meeting her at Mrs. Moyne’s 
house-party last spring?” 

The Girl fell readily into the game. She turned 
the White Pony loose in the dooryard, and then 
went into the queer old kitchen, rolled up her 
sleeves, wound herself round with a blue-checked 
apron, and commenced to work. She had a deft 
touch at household matters, and the Man followed 
her about as humbly as though he himself had not 
been adequately providing meals for the past two 
months. 

The color rose high in the Girl’s cheeks, and her 
143 


THE RUNAWAY ROAD 


voice took on the thrill and breathiness of amused 
excitement. Wherever she found a huddle of best 
china or linen or silver she raided it for her use, 
and the table flared forth at last with a dainty, in- 
consequent prettiness that quite defied the Artist’s 
prescribed rules for beauty. 

It was a funny dinner, with an endless amount 
of significant bantering going on right under the 
Artist’s sunburned nose. Yet for all the mirth of 
the situation, the Girl had quite a chance to study 
the face of her special host, in all its full detail of 
worldliness, of spirituality, of hardness, of sweet- 
ness. Her final impression, as her first one, was 
of a wonderful affinity and congeniality. “ His 
face is like a harbor for all my stormy thoughts,” 
was the way she described it to herself. 

After dinner the three washed up the dishes as 
sedately as though they had been working together 
day-in, day-out through the whole season, and after 
that the Artist escaped as quickly as possible to 
catch a cloud effect which he seemed to consider 
preposterously vital. 

Then with a dreary little feeling of a prize-pleas- 
ure all spent and gone, the Girl went over to the 
mirror in the sitting-room and pinned on her gray 
slouch hat and patted her hair and straightened her 
belt 

But it was not her own reflection that interested 

144 


THE RUNAWAY ROAD 


her most The mirror made a fine frame for the 
whole quaint room, with its dingy landscape wall- 
paper from which the scarlet petticoat of a shep- 
herdess or the vivid green of a garland stood out 
with cheerful crudity. The battered, blackened 
fireplace was lurid here and there with gleams of 
copper kettles, and a huge gray cat purred com- 
fortably in the curving seat of a sun-baked rocking- 
chair. 

It was a good picture to take home in your mind 
for remembrance, when walls should be brick and 
rooms ornate and life hackneyed, and the Girl shut 
her eyes for a second, experimentally, to fix the 
vision in her consciousness. 

When she opened her eyes again the Man was 
struggling through the doorway dragging a small, 
heavy trunk. 

“ Oh, don’t go yet ! ” he exclaimed. “ Here are 
a lot of your things in this trunk. I brought them 
in to show you.” 

And he dragged the trunk to the middle of the 
room and knelt down on the floor and commenced to 
unlock it. 

“My things?” cried the Girl in amazement, and 
ran across the room and sat down on the floor be- 
side him. " My things ? ” 

There was a funny little twist to the Man’s 
mouth that never relaxed all the time he was tink- 
H5 


TO 


THE RUNAWAY ROAD 


ering with the lock. “Yes — your things,” was 
all he said till the catch yielded finally, and he raised 
the cover to display the full contents to his com- 
panion’s curious, eyes. 

“Oh — books !” she cried out, with a sudden, 
sweeping flush of comprehension, and darted her 
hand into the dusty pile and pulled out a well-worn 
copy of the Rubaiyat. Instinctively she clasped it 
to her. 

“ I thought so ! ” said the Youngish Man quiz- 
zically. “ I thought that was one of your books. 

“ When Time lets slip a little, perfect hour. 

Oh, take it — for it will not come again.” 

His eyes narrowed, and his hands reached nerv- 
ously to regain possession of the volume. Then he 
laughed. 

“ /, also, used to think that Life was made for 
me,” he scoffed teasingly. “ It ’s a glorious idea 
— as long as it lasts! You take every harsh old 
happening and every flimsy friendship and line it 
with your own silk, and then sit by and say, ‘ Oh, 
is n't the World a rustly, shimmery, luxurious place ! ’ 
And all the time the happening is harsh, and the 
friendship is flimsy, and it ’s just your own per- 
ishable silk lining that does the rustle and the shim- 
mer and the luxury act. Oh, I suppose that ’s 
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THE RUNAWAY ROAD 


‘ woman talk ’ about silk linings, but I know a 
thing or two, even if I am a man.” 

But the radiancy of the Girl’s face defied his 
cynicism utterly. Her eyes were absolutely fathom- 
less with Youth. 

Then his mood changed suddenly. He reached 
out with a little brooding gesture of protection. 
“ These are my college books,” he confided, “ my 
Dream Library. I ’ve scarcely thought of them for 
a dozen years. I don’t meet many dreamers nowa- 
days. You ’ve probably got a lot of newer books 
than these, but I ’ll wager you anything in the 
world that every book here is a precious friend to 
you. I should n’t wonder if your own copies 
opened exactly to the same places. Here ’s young 
Keats with his shadowing tragedy. How you have 
mooned over it. And here ’s Tennyson. What 
about the starlit vision : 

“And on her lover’s arm she leant, 

And round her waist she felt it fold, — ” 

The Girl took up the words softly in unison: 

“ And far across the hills they went 
To that new world which is the old.” 

In rushing, eager tenderness she browsed through 
one book after another, sometimes silently, some- 
times with a little crooning quotation, where cor- 
147 


THE RUNAWAY ROAD 


ners were turned down. And when she had quite 
finished, her eyes were like stars, and she looked 
up tremulously, and whispered : 

“ Why, we — like — just — the — same — 
things.” 

But the Youngish Man did not smile back at her. 
His face in that second turned suddenly old-looking 
and haggard and gray. He threw the books back 
into their places, and slammed the trunk-cover with 
a bang. 

For just the infinitesimal fraction of a second 
the Man and the Girl looked into each other’s eyes. 
For just that infinitesimal fraction of a second the 
Man’s eyes were as unfathomable as the Girl’s. 

Then with a great sniff and scratching and whine, 
the White Bulldog pushed his way into the room, 
and the Girl jumped up in alarm to note that the sun 
was dropping very low in the west, and that the 
shadows of late afternoon crept palpably over her 
companion’s face. 

For a moment the two stood awkwardly with- 
out a word, and then the Girl with a conscious ef- 
fort at lightness queried : 

“ But where did the Runaway Road go to ? I 
must find out.” 

The Youngish Man turned as though something 
had startled him. 

148 


THE RUNAWAY ROAD 

“ Would n’t you rather leave things just as they 
are ? ” he asked. 

“ NO ! ” The Girl stamped her foot vehemently. 
“ NO ! I want everything. I want the whole ad- 
venture.” 

“The whole adventure?” The Youngish Man 
winced at the phrase, and then laughed to cover his 
seriousness. 

“ All right,” he acquiesced. “ I ’ll show you just 
where the Runaway Road goes to.” 

Without further explanation he stepped to the 
dooryard and scooped up two heaping handfuls of 
gravel from the Road. As he came back into the 
room he trailed a little line of earth across the 
floor to the foot of the stairs, and threw the re- 
maining handful up the steps just as a heedless 
child might have done. 

“ Go follow your Runaway Road,” he smiled, 
“and see where it leads to, if you are so eager! 
I ’m going down to the woods to see if my brother 
is quite lost in his clouds.” 

Wasn’t that another dare? It seemed a craven 
thing to tease for a climax and then shirk it. She 
had never shirked anything yet that was right, no 
matter how unusual it was. 

She started for the stairs. One step, two steps, 
three steps, four steps — her riding-boots grated on 
149 


THE RUNAWAY ROAD 


the gravel. “ Oh, you funny Runaway Road,” she 
trembled, “ where do you go to ? ” 

At the top stairs a tiny waft of earth turned her 
definitely into the first doorway. 

She took one step across the threshold, and then 
stood stock-still and stared. It was a woman's 
room . And from floor to ceiling and from wall 
to wall flaunted an incongruous, moneyed effort to 
blot jout all temperament and pang and trenchant 
life-history from one spot at least of the little old 
gray farmhouse. Bauble was there, and fashion 
and novelty, but the whole gay decoration looked 
and felt like the sumptuous dressing of a child 
whom one hated. 

With a gasp of surprise the Girl went over and 
looked at herself in the mirror. 

“ Would n’t I look queer in a room like this ? ” 
she whispered to herself. But she didn’t look 
queer at all. She only felt queer, like a flatted 
note. 

Then she hurried right down the stairs again, 
and went out in the yard, and caught the White 
Pony, and climbed up into her saddle. 

The Youngish Man came running to say good- 
by. 

“ Well? ” he said. 

The Girl’s eyes were steady as her hand. If her 
heart fluttered there was no sign of it. 

150 


THE RUNAWAY ROAD 


“ Why, it was a woman's room,” she answered 
to his inflection. 

“ Yes/’ said the Youngish Man quite simply. 
“ It is my wife’s room. My wife is in Europe get- 
ting her winter clothes. All people do not happen 
— to — like — the — same — things.” 

The Girl put out her hand to him with bright- 
faced friendliness. 

“ In Europe ? ” she repeated. “ Indeed, I shall 
not be so local when I think of her. Wherever 
she is — all the time — I shall always think of your 
wife as being — most of anything else — in luck ” 

She drew back her hand and chirruped to the 
White Pony, but the Youngish Man detained her. 

“ Wait a second,” he begged. “ Here ’s a copy 
of Matthew Arnold for you to take home as a 
token, though there ’s only one thing in it for us, 
and you won’t care for that until you are forty. 
You can play it ’s about the mountains that you 
pass going home. Here it is : 

"Unaffrighted by the silence round them, 

Undistracted by the sights they see, 

THESE demand not that the things about them 
Yield them love, amusement, sympathy.” 

“ Rather cracked-ice comfort, isn’t it?” the 
Girl laughed as she tucked the little book into her 
blouse. 

151 


THE RUNAWAY ROAD 


“ Rather,” said the Youngish Man, “ but cracked 
ice is good for fevers, and Youth is the most raging 
fever that I know about.” 

Then he stood back from the White Pony, and 
smiled quizzically, and the Girl turned the White 
Pony’s head, and started down the Road. 

Just before the first curve in the alders, she 
whirled in her saddle and looked back. The 
Youngish Man was still standing there watching 
her, and she held up her hand as a final signal. 
Then the Road curved her out of sight. 

It was chilly now in the gloaming shade of the 
woods, and home seemed a long way off. After 
a mile or two the White Pony dragged as though 
his feet were sore, and when she tried to force him 
into a jarring canter the sharp corners of the 
Matthew Arnold book goaded cruelly against her 
breast. 

“ It is n’t going to be a very pleasant ride,” she 
said. “ But it was quite an adventure. I don’t 
know whether to call it the ‘ Adventure of the Runa- 
way Road ’ or the ‘ Adventure of the Little Perfect 
Hour.’ ” 

Then she shivered a little and tried to keep the 
White Pony in the rapidly fading sun spots of the 
Road, but the shadows grew thicker and cracklier 
and more lonesome every minute, and the only fa- 
miliar sound of life to be heard was ’way off in 

152 


THE RUNAWAY ROAD 


the distance, where some little lost bossy was call- 
ing plaintively for its mother. 

There were plenty of unfamiliar sounds, though. 
Things — nothing special, but just Things — 
sighed mournfully from behind a looming boulder. 
Something dark, with gleaming eyes, scudded 
madly through the woods. A ghastly, mawkish 
chill like tomb-air blew dankly from the swamp. 
Myriads of tiny insects droned venomously. The 
White Pony shied at a flash of heat lightning, and 
stumbled bunglingly on a rolling stone. Worst of 
all, far behind her, sounded the unmistakable tag- 
ging step of some stealthy creature. 

For the first time in her life the girl was 
frightened — hideously, sickeningly frightened of 
Night! 

Back in the open clearing round the tiny farm- 
house, the light, of course, still lingered in a lulling 
yellow-gray. It would be an hour yet, she rea- 
soned, before the great, black loneliness settled 
there. She could picture the little, simple, homely, 
companionable activities of early evening — the 
sputter of a candle, the good smell of a pipe, the 
steamy murmur of a boiling kettle. O — h! But 
could one go back wildly and say : “ It is darker 

and cracklier than I supposed in the woods, and 
I am a wilful Girl, and there are fifteen wilful 
miles between me and home — and there is a ceme- 
153 


THE RUNAWAY ROAD 


tery on the way, and a new grave — and a squalid 
camp of gypsies — and a broken bridge — and 1 
am afraid! What shall I do?” 

She laughed aloud at the absurdity, and cut at 
the White Pony sharply with her whip. It would 
be lighter, she thought, on the open village road 
below the hill. 

Love ? Amusement ? Sympathy ? She shook 
her young fist defiantly at the hulking contour of 
a stolid, bored old mountain that loomed up through 
a gap in the trees. “ Drat Self-sufficiency,” she 
cursed, with a vehement little-girl curse. “ I 
won’t be a bored old Mountain. I zvont! I 
won't! 1 won't!” 

All her short, eager life, it seemed, she had been 
floundering like a stranger in a strange land — no 
father or mother, no chum, no friend, no lover, no 
anything — and now just for a flash, just for one 
“ little, perfect hour ” she had found a voice at 
last that spoke her own language , and the voice 
belonged to a Man who belonged to another woman ! 

She remembered her morning’s singing with a 
bitter pang. “ Nothing is mine forever. Nothing, 
nothing , NOTHING!” she sobbed. 

A great, black, smothering isolation like a pall 
settled down over her, and seemed to pin itself with 
a stab through her heart. Everybody, once in his 
time, has tried to imagine his Dearest-one abso- 
154 


THE RUNAWAY ROAD 


lutely nonexistent, unborn, and tortured himself 
with the possibility of such a ghostly vacuum in 
his life. To the Girl suddenly it seemed as though 
puzzled, lonely, unmated, all her short years, she 
had stumbled now precipitously on the Great Cause 
Of It — a vacuum. It was not that she had lost 
any one, or missed any one. It was simply that 
some one had never been born ! 

The thought filled her with a whimsical new 
terror. She pounded the White Pony into a gal- 
lop and covered the last half-mile of the Runaway 
Road. At the crest of the hill the valley vista 
brightened palely and the White Pony gave a 
whimper of awakened home instinct. Cautiously, 
warily, with legs folding like a jack-knife he began 
the hazardous descent. 

Was he sleepy? Was he clumsy? Was he foot- 
sore? Just before the Runaway Road smoothed 
out into the village highway his knees wilted sud- 
denly under him, and he pitched headlong with a 
hideous lurch that sent the Girl hurtling over his 
neck into a pitiful, cluttered heap among the dust 
and stones, where he came back after his first pan- 
icky run, and blew over her with dilated nostrils, 
and whimpered a little before he strayed off to a 
clover patch on the highway below. 

Twilight deepened to darkness. Darkness quick- 
ened at last to stars. It was Night, real Night, 
155 


THE RUNAWAY ROAD 


black alike in meadow, wood, and dooryard, before 
the Girl opened her eyes again. Part of an orange 
moon, waning, wasted, decadent, glowed dully in 
the sky. 

For a long time, stark-still and numb, she lay 
staring up into space, conscious of nothing except 
consciousness. It was a floaty sort of feeling. 
Was she dead? That was the first thought that 
twittered in her brain. Gradually, though, the re- 
assuring edges of her cheeks loomed into sight, 
and a beautiful, real pain racked along her spine and 
through her side. It was the pain that whetted 
her curiosity. “If it’s my neck that’s broken,” 
she reasoned, “ it ’s all over. If it ’s my heart it ’s 
only just begun.” 

Then she wriggled one hand very cautiously, 
and a White Doggish Something came over and 
licked her fingers. It felt very kind and refresh- 
ing. 

Now and then on the road below, a carriage 
rattled by, or one voice called to another. She 
did n’t exactly care that no one noticed her, or 
rescued her — indeed, she was perfectly, sluggishly 
comfortable — but she remembered with alarming 
distinctness that once, on a scorching city pavement, 
she had gone right by a bruised purple pansy that 
lay wilting underfoot. She could remember just 
how it looked. It had a funny little face, purple 

156 


THE RUNAWAY ROAD 


and yellow, and all twisted with pain. And she 
had gone right by. And she felt very sorry about 
it now. 

She was still thinking about that purple pansy 
an hour later, when she heard the screeching toot 
of an automobile, the snort of a horse, and the ter- 
rified clatter of hoofs up the hill. Then the White 
Doggish Something leaped up and barked a sharp, 
fluttery bark like a signal. 

The next thing she knew, pleasant voices and a 
lantern were coming toward her. “ They will be 
frightened,” she thought, “ to find a body in the 
Road.” So, “ Coo-o ! Coo-o ! ” she cried in a 
faint little voice. 

Then quickly a bright light poured into her face, 
and she swallowed very hard with her eyes for a 
whole minute before she could see that two men 
were bending over her. One of the men was just 
a man, but the other one was the Boy From Home. 
As soon as she saw him she began to cry very softly 
to herself, and the Boy From Home took her right 
up in his great, strong arms and carried her down 
to the cushioned comfort of the automobile. 

“ Where — did — you — come — from ? ” she 
whispered smotheringly into his shoulder. 

The harried, boyish face broke brightly into a 
smile. 

“I came from Rosedale to-night, to find you!” 

15 7 


THE RUNAWAY ROAD 


he said. “ But they sent me up here on business 
to survey a new Road.” 

“ To survey a new Road? ” she gasped. “ That’s 

— good. All the Roads that I know — go — to — 
Other People’s Homes.” 

Her head began to droop limply to one side. 
She felt her senses reeling away from her again. 
“If — I — loved — you,” she hurried to ask, 
“ would — you — make — me — a — safe Road 

— all my own?” 

The Boy From Home gave a scathing glance 
at the hill that reared like a crag out of the dark- 
ness. 

“ If I could n’t make a safer Road than that — ” 
he began, then stopped abruptly, with a sudden 
flash of illumination, and brushed his trembling lips 
across her hair. 

“ I ’ll make you the safest, smoothest Road that 
ever happened,” he said, “ if I have to dig it with 
my fingers and gnaw it with my teeth.” 

A little, snuggling sigh of contentment slipped 
from the Girl’s lips. 

“ Do — you — suppose,” she whispered, “ do — 
you — suppose — that — after — all — this — was 

— the real — end — of — the Runaway Road ? ” 


SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED 
IN OCTOBER 






SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED 
IN OCTOBER 


wmM 



MONDAY, Tuesday, Wednesday, 
Thursday, Friday, it had rained. 
Day in, day out, day in, day out, 
day in, it had rained and rained 
and rained and rained and rained, 
till by Friday night the great blue 
mountains loomed like a chunk of ruined velvet, 
and the fog along the valley lay thick and gross as 
mildewed porridge. 

It was a horrid storm. Slop and shiver and rot- 
ting leaves were rampant. Even in Alrik’s snug lit- 
tle house the chairs were wetter than moss. Clothes 
in the closets hung lank and clammy as undried 
bathing-suits. Worst of all, across every mirror 
lay a breathy, sad gray mist, as though ghosts had 
been back to whimper there over their lost faces. 

It had never been so before in the first week of 
October. 

There were seven of us who used to tryst there 
together every year in the gorgeous Scotch-plaid 
Autumn, when the reds and greens and blues and 
ii 161 



SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED 


browns and yellows lapped and overlapped like a 
festive little kilt for the Young Winter, and every 
crisp, sweet day that dawned was like the taste of 
cider and the smell of grapes. 

That is the kind of October well worth living, 
and seven people make a wonderfully proper num- 
ber to play together in the countfy, particularly if 
six of you are men and women, and one of you is 
a dog. 

Yet, after all, it was October, and October alone, 
that lured us. We certainly differed astonishingly 
in most of our other tastes. 

Three of us belonged to the peaceful Maine 
woods — Alrik and Alrik’s Wife and his Growly- 
Dog-Gruff. Four of us came from the rackety 
cities — the Partridge Hunter, the Blue Serge Man, 
the Pretty Lady, and Myself — a newspaper 
woman. 

Incidentally, I may add that the Blue Serge Man 
and the Pretty Lady were husband and wife, but 
did not care much about it, having been married, 
very evidently, in some gorgeously ornate silver- 
plated emotion that they had mistaken at the time 
for the “ sterling ” article. The shine and beauty 
of the marriage had long since worn away, leaving 
things quite a little bit edgy here and there. Alrik’s 
young spouse was, wonder of wonders, a trans- 
planted New York chorus girl. No other bio- 
162 


IN OCTOBER 


graphical data are necessary except that Growly- 
Dog-Gruff was a brawling, black, fat-faced mon- 
grel whose complete sense of humor had been 
slammed in the door at a very early age. For 
some inexplainable reason, he seemed to hold all 
the rest of the crowd responsible for the catastrophe, 
but was wildly devoted to me. He showed this 
devotion by never biting me as hard as he bit the 
others. 

Yet even with Growly-Dog-Gruff included among 
our assets, we had always considered ourselves an 
extremely superior crowd. 

There were seven of us, I said, who used to 
tryst there together every autumn. But now, since 
the year before, three of us had gone , Alrik’s 
Wife, Alrik’s Dog, and the Blue Serge Man. So 
the four of us who remained huddled very close 
around the fire on that stormy, dreary, ghastly first 
night of our reunion, and talked-talked-talked and 
laughed-laughed-laughed just as fast as we possibly 
could for fear that a moment’s silence would plunge 
us all down, whether or no, into the sorrow-chasm 
that lurked so consciously on every side. Yet we 
certainly looked and acted like a very jovial quartet. 

The Pretty Lady, to be sure, was a black wisp 
of crape in her prim, four-footed chair ; but Alrik’s 
huge bulk tipped jauntily back against the wains- 
coting in a gaudy-colored Mackinaw suit, with 
163 


SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED 


merely a broad band of black across his left sleeve 
— as one who, neither affirming nor denying the 
formalities of grief, would laconically warn the 
public at large to “ Keep Off My Sorrow.” I 
liked Alrik, and I had liked Alrik’s Wife. But I 
had loved Alrik’s Dog. I do not care especially for 
temper in women, but a surly dog, or a surly man, 
is as irresistibly funny to me as Chinese music, there 
is so little plot to any of them. 

But now on the hearth-rug at my feet the Par- 
tridge Hunter lay in amiable corduroy comfort, 
with the little puff of his pipe and his lips throb- 
bing out in pleasant, dozy regularity. He had 
traveled in Japan since last we met, and one’s blood 
flowed pink and gold and purple, one’s flesh turned 
silk, one’s eyes onyx, before the wonder of his 
narrative. 

No one was to be outdone in adventurous recital. 
Alrik had spent the summer guiding a party of 
amateur sports 'along the Allagash, and his garbled 
account of it would have stocked a comic paper for 
a month. The Pretty Lady had christened a war- 
ship, and her eager, brooky voice went rippling and 
churtling through such major details as blue chiffon 
velvet and the goldiest kind of champagne. Even 
Alrik’s raw-boned Old Mother, clinking dirty sup- 
per dishes out in the kitchen, had a crackle-voiced 
tale of excitement to contribute about a floundering 
164 


The four of us who remained huddled very close around the fire 














IN OCTOBER 


spring bear that she had soused with soap-suds from 
her woodshed window. 

But all the time the storm grew worse and worse. 
The poor, tiny old house tore and writhed under 
the strain. Now and again a shutter blew shrilly 
loose, or a chimney brick thudded down, or a great 
sheet of rain sucked itself up like a whirlpool and 
then came drenching and hurtling itself in a per- 
fect frenzy against the frail, clattering window- 
panes. 

It was a good night for four friends to be housed 
together in a red, red room, where the low ceiling 
brooded over you like a face and the warped floor 
curled around you like the cuddle of a hand. A 
living-room should always be red, I think, like the 
walls of a heart, and cluttered, as Alrik’s was, with 
every possible object, mean or fine, funny or pa- 
thetic, that typifies the owner's personal experi- 
ence. 

Yet there are people, I suppose, people stuffed 
with arts, not hearts, who would have monotoned 
Alrik’s bright walls a dull brain-gray, ripped down 
the furs, the fishing-tackle, the stuffed owls, the 
gaudy theatrical posters, the shelf of glasses, the 
spooky hair wreaths, the really terrible crayon por- 
trait of some much-beloved ancient grandame ; and, 
supplementing it all with a single, homesick Japan- 
ese print, yearning across the vacuum at a chalky 


SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED 


white bust of a perfect stranger like Psyche or 
Ruskin, would have called the whole effect more 
“ successful.” Just as though the crudest possible 
room that represents the affections is not infinitely 
more worth while than the most esoteric apartment 
that represents the intellect. 

There were certainly no vacuums in Alrik’s room. 
Everything in it was crowded and scrunched to- 
gether like a hard, friendly hand-shake. It was the 
most fiercely, primitively sincere room that I have 
ever seen, and king or peasant therefore would have 
felt equally at home in it. Surely no mere man 
could have crossed the humpy threshold without 
a blissful, instinctive desire to keep on his hat and 
take off his boots. Alrik knew how to make a room 
“ homeful.” Alrik knew everything in the world 
except grammar. 

Red warmth, yellow cheer, and all-colored jollity 
were there with us. 

Faster and faster we talked, and louder and 
louder we laughed, until at last, when the conversa- 
tion lost its breath utterly, Alrik jumped up with 
a grin and started our old friend the phonograph. 
His first choice of music was a grotesque duo by 
two back-yard cats. It was one of those irresisti- 
bly silly minstrel things that would have exploded 
any decent bishop in the midst of his sermon. Cer- 
tainly no one of us had ever yet been able to with- 
166 


IN OCTOBER 


stand it. But now no bristling , injuriated dog 
jumped from his sleep and charged like a whole 
regiment on the perfectly innocent garden . And 
the duo somehow seemed strangely flat. 

“ Here is something we used to like,” suggested 
Alrik desperately, and started a splendid barytone 
rendering of “ Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes.” 
But no high-pitched , mocking tenor voice took up 
the solemn velvet song and flirted it like a cheap 
chiffon scarf. And the Pretty Lady rose very sud- 
denly and went out to the kitchen indefinitely “ for 
a glass of water.” It was funny about the Blue 
Serge Man. I had not liked him overmuch, but I 
missed not-liking-him with a crick in my heart 
that was almost sorrow. 

“ Oh, for heaven’s sake try some other music ! ” 
cried the Partridge Hunter venomously, and Alrik 
clutched out wildly for the first thing he could 
reach. It was “ Give My Regards to Broadway.” 
We had practically worn out the record the year be- 
fore, but its mutilated remains whirred along, drop- 
ping an occasional note or word, with the same 
cheerful spunk and unconcern that characterized 
the song itself : 

“ Give my regards to Broadway, 

Remember me to Herald Square, 

Tell all the — whirry — whirry, whirrrrry — whirrrrrrr 
That I will soon be there.” 


SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED 


The Patridge Hunter began instantly to beat muf- 
fled time with his soft felt slippers. Alrik plunged 
as usual into a fearfully clever and clattery imita- 
tion of an ox shying at a street-car. But zvhat of 
it? No wakened, sparkling-eyed girl came stealing 
forth from her corner to cuddle her biasing cheek 
against the cool, brass-colored jowl of the phono- 
graph horn. An All-Goneness is an amazing thing. 
It was strange about Alrik’s Wife. Her presence 
had been as negative as a dead gray dove. But her 
absence was like scarlet strung with bells! 

The evening began to drag out like a tortured 
rubber band getting ready to snap. 

It was surely eleven o’clock before the Pretty 
Lady returned from the kitchen with our hot lem- 
onades. The tall glasses jingled together pleas- 
antly on the tray. The height was there, the 
breadth, the precious, steaming fragrance. But 
the Blue Serge Man had always mixed our night- 
caps for us. 

With grandiloquent pleasantry, the Partridge 
Hunter jumped to his feet, raised his glass, toasted 
“ Happy Days,” choked on the first swallow, bun- 
gled his grasp, and dropped the whole glass in shat- 
tering, messy fragments to the floor. 

“ Lord,” he muttered under his breath, “ one 
could stand missing a fellow in a church or a grave- 
yard or a mournful sunset glow — but to miss him 
1 68 


IN OCTOBER 


in a foolish, folksy — hot lemonade ! — Lord ! ” 
And he shook his shoulders almost angrily and 
threw himself down again on the hearth-rug. 

The darkening room was warm as an oven now, 
and the great, soft, glowing pile of apple-wood em- 
bers lured one’s drowsy eyes like a flame-colored 
pillow. No one spoke at all until midnight. 

But the clock had only just finished complaining 
about the hour when the Partridge Hunter straight- 
ened up abruptly and cried out to no one in par- 
ticular : 

“ Well, I simply can’t bluff this out any longer. 
I ’ve just got to know how it all happened! ” 

No one stopped to question his meaning. No 
one stopped to parry with word or phrase. Like 
two tense music-boxes wound to their utmost 
resonance, but with mechanism only just that in- 
stant released, Alrik and the Pretty Lady burst into 
sound. 

The Pretty Lady spoke first. Her breath was 
short and raspy and cross, like the breath of a per- 
son who runs for a train — and misses it. 

“ It was — in — Florida,” she gasped, “ the — 
last — of March. The sailboat was a dreadful, 
flimsy, shattered thing. But he would go out in it 
— alone — storm or no storm ! ” She spoke with 
a sudden sense of emotional importance, with 
a certain strange, fierce, new pride in the shortcom- 
169 


SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED 

ings of her Man. “ He must have swamped within 
an hour. They found his boat. But they never 
found his body. Just as one could always find his 
pocket, but never his watch — his purse, but never 
his money — his song, but never his soul.” Her 
broken self-control plunged deeper and deeper into 
bitterness. “It was a stupid — wicked — wilful 

— accident,” she persisted, “ and I can see him in 
his last, smothery — astonished — moment — just 

— as — as — plainly — as — though — I — had — 
been — there. Do you think for an instant that he 
would swallow even — Death — without making a 
fuss about it? Can’t you hear him rage and sput- 
ter: * This is too salt! This is too cold! Take it 
away and bring me another ! ’ While all the time 
his frenzied mind was racing up and down some 
precious, memoried playground like the Harvard 
Stadium or the New York Hippodrome, whimper- 
ing, ‘ Everybody ’ll be there except — me — except 
m-e!’” 

The Pretty Lady’s voice took on a sudden hurt, 
left-out resentment. “Of course,” she hurried on, 
“ he was n’t exactly sad to go — nothing could 
make him sad. But I know that it must have made 
him very mad . He had just bought a new auto- 
mobile. And he had rented a summer place at 
Marblehead. And he wanted to play tennis in 
June—” 


170 


IN OCTOBER 


She paused for an instant’s breath, and Alrik 
crashed like a moose into the silence. 

“ It was lung trouble ! ” he attested vehemently. 
“ Cough, cough, cough, all the time. It came on 
specially worse in April, and she died in May. She 
was n’t never very strong, you know, but she ’d 
been brought up in your wicked old steam-heated 
New York, and she would persist in wearing tissue- 
paper clothes right through our rotten icy winters 
up here. And when I tried to dose her like the 
doctor said, with cod-liver oil or any of them thick 
things, I could n’t fool her — she just up an’ said it 
was nothin’ but liquid flannel, and spit it out and 
sassed me. And Gruff — Growly-Dog-Gruff,” he 
finished hastily, “ I don’t know what ailed him. 
He jus’ kind of followed along about June.” 

The Partridge Hunter drew a long, heavy breath. 
When he spoke at last, his voice sounded like the 
voice of a man who holds his hat in his hand, and 
the puffs of smoke from his pipe made a sort of lit- 
tle halo round his words. 

“ Is n’t it nice,” he mused, “ to think that while 
we four are cozying here to-night in the same jolly 
old haunts, perhaps they three — Man, Girl, and 
Dog — are cuddling off together somewhere in the 
big, spooky Unknown, in the shade of a cloud, or 
the shine of a star — talking — perhaps — about 


SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED 


The whimsical comfort of the thought pleased 
me. I did not want any one to be alone on such a 
night. 

But Alrick’s tilted chair came crashing down on 
the floor with a resounding whack. His eyes were 
blazing. 

“ She ain't with him ! ” he cried. “ She ain't, 
she ain’t, she A-I-N-’T! I won’t have it. Why, 
it’s the middle of the night! ” 

And in that electric instant I saw the Pretty 
Lady’s face set rigidly, all except her mouth, which 
twisted in my direction. 

“ I ’ll wager she is with him,” she whispered un- 
der her breath. “ She always did tag him wherever 
he went ! ” 

Then I felt the toe of my slipper meet the re- 
cumbent elbow of the Partridge Hunter. Had I 
reached out to him? Or had he reached back to 
me? There was no time to find out, for the 
smooth, round conversation shattered prickingly in 
the hand like a blown-glass bauble, and with much 
nervous laughter and far-fetched joke-making, we 
rose, rummaged round for our candles, and climbed 
upstairs to bed. 

Alrik’s Old Mother burrowed into a corner under 
the eaves. 

The Pretty Lady had her usual room, and mine 
was next to hers. For a lingering moment I dallied 
172 


IN OCTOBER 


with her, craving some tiny, absurd bit of loving 
service. First, I helped her with a balky hook on 
her collar. Then I started to put her traveling 
coat and hat away in the closet. On the upper shelf 
something a little bit scary brushed my hands. It 
was the Blue Serge Man's cap , with a ragged gash 
across it where Growly-D og-Gruff had worried it 
on a day I remembered well . With a hurried 
glance over my shoulder to make sure that the 
Pretty Lady had not also spied it, I reached up and 
shoved it — oh, ’way, ’way back out of sight, where 
no one but a detective or a lover could possibly 
find it. 

Then I hurried off to my room with a most gar- 
ish human wonder : How could a man be all gone, 
but his silly cap last? 

My little room was just as I remembered it, bare, 
bleak, and gruesomely clean, with a rag rug, a 
worsted motto, and a pink china vase for really 
sensuous ornamentation. I opened the cheap pine 
bureau to stow away my things. A trinket jingled 
— a tawdry rhinestone side-comb. Caught in the 
setting was a tiny wisp of brown hair . I slammed 
the drawer with a bang, and opened another. 
Metal and leather slid heavily along the bottom. 
It might have been my beast’s collar, if distinctly 
across the name-plate had not run the terse phrase 
“ Alrik’s Cross Dog.” I did not like to have my 
173 


SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED 


bureau haunted ! When I slammed that drawer, it 
cracked the looking-glass. 

Then/ with candle burning just as cheerfully as 
possible, I lay down on the bed in all my clothes 
and began to wake up — wider and wider and 
wider. 

My reason lay quite dormant like some drugged 
thing but my memory, photographic as a lens, be- 
gan to reproduce the ruddy, blond face of the Blue 
Serge Man beaming across a chafing-dish ; the 
mournful, sobbing sound of a dog’s dream; the 
crisp, starched, Monday smell of the blue gingham 
aprons that Alrik’s Wife used to wear. The vision 
was altogether too vivid to be pleasant. 

Then the wet wind blew in through the window 
like a splash of alcohol, chilling, revivifying, sting- 
ing as a whip-lash. The tormented candle flame 
struggled furiously for a moment, and went out, 
hurtling the black night down upon me like some 
choking avalanche of horror. In utter idiotic 
panic I jumped from my bed and clawed my way 
toward the feeble gray glow of the window-frame. 
The dark dooryard before me was drenched with 
rain. The tall linden trees waved and mourned in 
the wind. 

“ Of course, of course, there are no ghosts,” I 
reasoned, just as one reasons that there is no mis- 
take in the dictionary, no flaw in the multiplication 
174 


IN OCTOBER 


table. But sometimes one’s fantastically jaded 
nerves think they have found the blunder in lan- 
guage, the fault in science. Ghosts or no ghosts 
— if you thought you saw one, would n’t it be just 
as bad ? My eyes strained out into the darkness. 
Suppose — I — should — think — that I heard the 
bark of a dog? Suppose — suppose — that from 
that black shed, door where the automobile used to 
live, I should think — even t-h-i-n-k that I saw 
the Blue Serge Man come stumbling with a lantern ? 
The black shed door burst open with a bang-bang- 
bang, and I screamed, jumped, snatched a blanket, 
and fled for the lamp-lighted hall. 

A little dazzled by the sudden glow, I shrank 
back in alarm from a figure on the top stair. It 
was the Pretty Lady. Wrapped clumsily like my- 
self in a big blanket, she sat huddled there with the 
kerosene lamp close beside her, mending the Blue 
Serge Man’s cap. On the step below her, smoth- 
ered in a soggy lavender comforter, crouched Al- 
rik’s Old Mother, her dim eyes brightened uncan- 
nily with superstitious excitement. I was evidently 
a welcome addition to the party, and the old woman 
cuddled me in like a meal-sack beside her. 

“ Naw one could sleep a night like this,” she 
croaked. 

“Sleep?” gasped the Pretty Lady. Scorn in- 
finite was in her tone. 


175 


SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED 


But comfortably and serenely from the end of 
the hall came the heavy, regular breathing of the 
Partridge Hunter, and from beyond that, Alrik’s 
blissful, oblivious snore. Yet Alrik was the only 
one among us who claimed an agonizing, personal 
sorrow. 

I began to laugh a bit hysterically. “ Men are 
funny people,” I volunteered. 

Alrik’s Old Mother caught my hand with a 
chuckle, then sobered suddenly, and shook her 
wadded head. 

“ Men ain't exactly — people,” she confided. 
“ Men ain't exactly people — at all ! ” 

The conviction evidently burned dull, steady, 
comforting as a night-light, in the old crone’s eighty 
years’ experience, but the Pretty Lady’s face 
grabbed the new idea desperately, as though she 
were trying to rekindle happiness with a wet match. 
Yet every time her fretted lips straightened out in 
some semblance of Peace, her whole head would 
suddenly explode in one gigantic sneeze. There 
was no other sound, I remember, for hours and 
hours, except the steady, monotonous, slobbery 
swash of a bursting roof-gutter somewhere close in 
the eaves. 

Certainly Dawn itself was not more chilled and 
gray than we when we crept back at last to our 
176 


IN OCTOBER 


beds, thick-eyed with drowsy exhaustion, limp- 
bodied, muffle-minded. 

But when we woke again, the late, hot noonday 
sun was like a scorching fire in our faces, and the 
drenched dooryard steamed like a dye-house in the 
sudden burst of unseasonable heat. 

After breakfast, the Pretty Lady, in her hun- 
dred-dollar ruffles, went out to the barn with shabby 
Alrik to help him mend a musty old plow harness. 
The Pretty Lady’s brains were almost entirely in 
her fingers. So were Alrik’s. The exclusiveness 
of their task seemed therefore to thrust the Par- 
tridge Hunter and me off by ourselves into a sort of 
amateur sorrow class, and we started forth as cheer- 
fully as we could to investigate the autumn woods. 

Passing the barn door, we heard the strident 
sound of Alrik’s complaining. Braced with his 
heavy shoulders against a corner of the stall, he 
stood hurling down his new-born theology upon 
the glossy blond head of the Pretty Lady who sat 
perched adroitly on a nail keg with two shiny- 
tipped fingers prying up the corners of her mouth 
into a smile. One side of the smile was distinctly 
wry. But Alrik’s face was deadly earnest. Sweat 
bubbled out on his forehead like tears that could not 
possibly wait to reach his eyes. 

“ There ought to be a separate heaven for ladies 

1 77 


12 


SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED 


and gentlemen,” he was arguing frantically. 
“ *T ain’t fair. ’T ain’t right. I won’t have it ! 
I’ll see a priest. I’ll find a parson. If it ain’t 
proper to live with people,' it ain’t proper to die 
with ’em. I tell you I won’t have Amy careerin’ 
round with strange men. She always was foolish 
about men. And I ’m breakin’ my heart for her, 
and Mother ’s gettin’ old, and the house is goin’ 
to rack and ruin, but how — how can a man go and 
get married comfortable again when his mind ’s all 
torturin’ round and round and round about his first 
wife? ” 

The Partridge Hunter gave a sharp laugh under 
his breath, yet he did not seem exactly amused. 
“ Laugh for two ! ” I suggested, as we dodged out 
of sight round the corner and plunged off into the 
actual Outdoors. 

The heat was really intense, the October sun 
dazzlingly bright. Warmth steamed from the earth, 
and burnished from the sky. A plushy brown rab- 
bit lolling across the roadway dragged on one’s 
sweating senses like overshoes in June. Under our 
ruthless, heavy-booted feet the wet green meadow 
winced like some tender young salad. At the edge 
of the forest the big pines darkened sumptuously. 
Then, suddenly, between a scarlet sumach and a slim 
white birch, the cavernous wood-path opened forth 
178 


IN OCTOBER 


mysteriously, narrow and tall and domed like the 
arch of a cathedral. Not a bird twitted, not a leaf 
rustled, and, far as the eye could reach, the wet 
brown pine-needles lay thick and soft and padded 
like tan-bark, as though all Nature waited hushed 
and expectant for some exquisitely infinitesimal 
tragedy, like the travail of a squirrel. 

With brain and body all a-whisper and a-tiptoe, 
the Partridge Hunter and I stole deeper and deeper 
into the Color and the Silence and the Witchery, 
dazed at every step by the material proof of au- 
tumn warring against the spiritual insistence of 
spring. It was the sort of day to make one very 
tender toward the living just because they were liv- 
ing, and very tender toward the dead just because 
they were dead. 

At the gurgling bowl of a half-hidden spring, 
we made our first stopping-place. Out of his gen- 
erous corduroy pockets the Partridge Hunter 
tinkled two drinking-cups, dipped them deep in the 
icy water, and handed me one with a little shudder- 
ing exclamation of cold. For an instant his eyes 
searched mine, then he lifted his cup very high and 
stared off into Nothingness. 

“ To the — All-Gone People ” he toasted. 

I began to cry. He seemed very glad to have me 
cry. “ Cry for two,” he suggested blithely, “ cry 
179 


SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED 


for two/’ and threw himself down on the twiggy 
ground and began to snap metallically against the 
cup in his hand. 

“ Nice little tin cup,” he affirmed judicially. 
“ The Blue Serge Man gave it to me. It must 
have cost as much as fifteen cents. And it will 
last, I suppose, till the moon is mud and the stars 
are dough. But the Blue Serge Man himself is — 
quite gone. Funny idea ! ” The Partridge Hun- 
ter’s forehead began to knit into a fearful frown. 
“ Of course it is n’t so,” he argued, “ but it would 
certainly seem sometimes as though a man’s things 
were the only really immortal, indestructible part 
of him, and that Soul was nothing in the world but 
just a composite name for the S-ouvenirs, O-rna- 
ments, U-tensils, L-itter that each man’s person- 
ality accumulates in the few years’ time allotted to 
him. The man himself, you see, is wiped right off 
the earth like a chalk-mark, but you can’t escape or 
elude in a million years the wizened bronze elephant 
that he brought home from India, or the showy 
red necktie that ’s down behind his bureau, or the 
floating, wind-blown, ash-barrel bill for violets that 
turns up a generation hence in a German prayer- 
book at a French book-stall. 

“ And is n’t Death a teasing teacher ? Holds up 
a personality suddenly like a map — makes you 
learn by heart every possible, conceivable pleasant 
180 


IN OCTOBER 


detail concerning that personality, and then, when 
you are fairly bursting with your happy knowledge, 
tears up the map in your face and says, ‘ There ’s no 
such country any more, so what you Ve learned 
won’t do you the slightest good.’ And there you ’d 
only just that moment found out that your friend’s 
hair was a beautiful auburn instead of * a horrid 
red ’ ; that his blessed old voice was hearty, not 
4 noisy ’ ; that his table manners were quaint, not 
‘ queer ’ ; that his morals were broad, not ‘ bad.’ ” 

The Partridge Hunter’s mouth began to twist. 
“ It ’s a horrid thing to say,” he stammered, “ but 
there ought to be a sample shroud in every home, 
so that when your husband is late to dinner, or 
your daughter smokes a cigarette, or your son de- 
cides to marry the cook, you could get out the 
shroud and try it on the offender, and make a few 
experiments concerning — well, values. Why, I 
saw a man last week dragged by a train — jerked* 
in and out and over and under, with his head or his 
heels or the hem of his coat just missing Death 
every second by the hundred-millionth fraction of 
an inch. But when he was rescued at last and went 
home to dinner — shaken as an aspen, sicker than 
pulp, tongue-tied like a padlock — I suppose, very 
likely, his wife scolded him for having forgotten the 
oysters.” 

The Partridge Hunter’s face flushed suddenly. 
181 


SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED 


“ I did n’t care much for Alrik’s Wife,” he at- 
tested abruptly. “ I always thought she was a 
trivial, foolish little crittur. But if I had known 
that I was never going to see her again — while the 
sun blazed or the stars blinked — I should like to 
have gone back from the buckboard that last morn- 
ing and stroked her brown hair just once away from 
her eyes. Does that seem silly to you ? ” 

“ Why, no,” I said. “ It does n’t seem silly at 
all. If I had guessed that the Blue Serge Man 
was going off on such a long, long, never-stop jour- 
ney, I might even have kissed him good-by. But 
I certainly can’t imagine anything that would have 
provoked or astonished him more! People can’t 
go round petting one another just on the possible 
chance of never meeting again. And goodness 
gracious ! nobody wants to. It ’s only that when 
a person actually dies, a sort of subtle, holy sense 
in you wakes up and wishes that just once for all 
eternity it might have gotten a signal through to 
that subtle, holy sense in the other person. And 
of course when a youngster dies, you feel some- 
how that he or she must have been different all 
along from other people, and you simply wish that 
you might have guessed that fact sooner — before 
it was too late.” 

The Partridge Hunter began to smile. “If you 
knew,” he teased, “ that I was going to be massa- 
182 


IN OCTOBER 


cred by an automobile or crumpled by an elevator 
before next October — would you wish that you 
had petted me just a little to-day? ” 

“ Yes,” I acknowledged. 

The Partridge Hunter pretended he was deaf. 
“ Say that once again,” he begged. 

“ Y-e-s,” I repeated. 

The Partridge Hunter put back his head and 
roared. “ That ’s just about like kissing through 
the telephone,” he said. “ It is n’t particularly sat- 
isfying, and yet it makes a desperately cunning 
sound.” 

Then I put back my head and laughed, too, be- 
cause it is so thoroughly comfortable and pleasant 
to be friends for only one single week in all the 
year. Independence is at best such a scant fabric, 
and every new friendship you incur takes just one 
more tuck in that fabric, till before you know it 
your freedom is quite too short to go out in. The 
Partridge Hunter felt exactly the same way about 
it, and after each little October playtime we ripped 
out the thread with never a scar to show. 

Even now while we laughed, we thought we 
might as well laugh at everything we could think 
of, and get just that much finished and out of the 
way. 

“ Perhaps,” said the Partridge Hunter, “ perhaps 
the Blue Serge Man was glad to see Amy, and per- 

183 


SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED 


haps he was rattled, no one can tell. But I 'll wager 
anything he was awfully mad to see Gruff. There 
were lots of meteors last June, I remember. I un- 
derstand now. It was the Blue Serge Man raking 
down the stars to pelt at Gruff.” 

“ Gruff was a very — nice dog,” I insisted. 

“He was a very growly dog,” acceded the Pai- 
tridge Hunter. 

“If you growl all the time, it ’s almost the same 
as a purr,” I argued. 

The Partridge Hunter smiled a little, but not 
very generously. Something was on his mind. 
“ Poor little Amy,” he said. “ Any man-and- 
woman game is playing with fire, but it ’s foolish to 
think that there are only two kinds, just Hearth- 
Fire and Hell-Fire. Why, there ’s ‘ Student-lamp ’ 
and ‘ Cook-stove ’ and ‘ Footlights/ Amy and the 
Blue Serge Man were playing with ‘ Footlights/ I 
guess. She needed an audience. And he was New 
York to her, great, blessed, shiny, rackety New 
York. I believe she loved Alrik. He must have 
been a pretty picturesque figure on that first and 
only time when he blazed his trail down Broadway. 
But happy with him — h-e-r-e? Away from New 
York? Five years? In just green and brown 
woods where the posies grow on the ground instead 
of on hats, and even the Christmas trees are 
trimmed with nothing except real snow and live 
184 


IN OCTOBER 


squirrels? G-l-o-r-y! Of course her chest caved 
in. There was n’t kinky air enough in the whole 
state of Maine to keep her kind of lungs active. 
Of course she starved to death. She needed her 
meat flavored with harp and violin; her drink 
aerated with electric lights. We might have done 
something for her if we ’d liked her just a little bit 
better. But I did n’t even know her till I heard that 
she was dead.” 

He jumped up suddenly and helped me to my 
feet. Something in my face must have stricken 
him. “ Would you like my warm hand to walk 
home with ? ” he finished quite abruptly. 

Even as he offered it, one of those chill, quick 
autumn changes came over the October woods. The 
sun grayed down behind huge, windy clouds. The 
leaves began to shiver and shudder and chatter, 
and all the gorgeous reds and greens dulled out of 
the world, leaving nothing as far as the eye could 
reach but dingy squirrel-colors, tawny grays and 
dusty yellows, with the far-off, panting sound of a 
frightened brook dodging zigzag through some 
meadow in a last, desperate effort to escape winter. 
As a draft from a tomb the cold, clammy, valley 
twilight was upon us. 

Like two bashful children scuttling through a 
pantomime, we hurried out of the glowery, darken- 
ing woods, and then at the edge of the meadow 

185 


SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED 


broke into a wild, mirthful race for Alrik’s bright 
hearth-fire, which glowed and beckoned from his 
windows like a little tame, domesticated sunset. 
The Partridge Hunter cleared the porch steps at 
a single bound, but I fell flat on the bruising door- 
mat. 

Nothing really mattered, however, except the 
hearth-fire itself. 

Alrik and the Pretty Lady were already there 
before us, kneeling down with giggly, scorching 
faces before a huge corn-popper foaming white 
with little muffled, ecstatic notes of heat and 
harvest. 

The Pretty Lady turned a crimson cheek to us, 
and Alrik’s tanned skin glowed like a freshly shel- 
lacked Indian. Even the Old Mother’s asthmatic 
breath purred from the jogging rocker like a spe- 
cially contented pussy-cat. 

Nothing in all the room, I remember, looked 
pallid or fretted except the great, ghastly white 
face of the clock. I despise a clock that looks wor- 
ried. It was n’t late, anyway. It was scarcely 
quarter-past four. 

Indeed, it was only half-past four when the com- 
pany came. We were making such a racket among 
ourselves that our very first warning was the sud- 
den, blunt, rubbery m-o-o of an automobile directly 
outside. Mud was the first thing I thought of. 

1 86 


IN OCTOBER 


Then the door flew open peremptorily, and there 
on the threshold stood the Blue Serge Man — not 
dank and wet with slime and seaweed, but fat and 
ruddy and warm in a huge gray ’possum coat. Only 
the fearful, stilted immovability of him gave the 
lie to his reality. 

It was a miracle! I had always wondered a great 
deal about miracles. I had always longed, craved, 
prayed to experience a miracle. I had always sup- 
posed that a miracle was the supreme sensation of 
existence, the ultimate rapture of the soul. But it 
seems I was mistaken. A miracle does n’t do any- 
thing to your soul for days and days and days. Your 
heart, of course, may jump, and your blood foam, 
but first of all it simply makes you very, very sick in 
the pit of your stomach. It made a man like Alrik 
clutch at his belt and jump up and down and “ hol- 
ler ” like a lunatic. It smote the Partridge Hunter 
somewhere between a cramp and a sob. It ripped 
the Old Mother close at her waist-line, and raveled 
her out on the floor like a fluff of gray yarn. 

But the Pretty Lady just stood up with her hands 
full of pop-corn, and stared and stared and stared 
and stared. From her shining blond head to 
her jet-black slippers she was like an exploded 
pulse. 

The Blue Serge Man stepped forward into the 
room and faltered. In that instant’s faltering, 

187 


SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED 


Alrik jumped for him like a great, glad, loving dog, 
and ripped the coat right off his shoulders. 

The Blue Serge Man’s lips were all a-grin, but 
a scar across his forehead gave a certain tense, 
stricken dignity to his eyes. Very casually, • very 
indolently, he began to tug at his gloves, staring all 
the while with malevolent joy on the fearful crayon 
portrait of the ancient grandame. 

“ That ’s the very last face I thought of when I 
was drowning,” he drawled, “ and there was n’t 
room enough in all heaven for the two of us. Bully 
old face, I ’m glad I ’m here. I ’ve been in Cuba,” 
he continued quite abruptly, “ and I meant to play 
dead forever and ever. But there was an autumn 
leaf — a red autumn leaf in a lady’s hat — and it 
made me homesick.” His voice broke suddenly, 
and he turned to his wife with quick, desperate, 
pleading intensity. “ I ’m not — much — good,” 
he gasped. “But I’ve — come back!” 

I saw the flaky white pop-corn go trickling 
through the Pretty Lady’s fingers, but she just stood 
there and shook and writhed like a tightly wrung 
newspaper smoldering with fire. Then her face 
flamed suddenly with a light I had never, never 
seen since my world was made. 

“ I don’t care whether you ’re any good or 
not,” she cried. “You’re alive! You’re alive! 
You ’re alive ! You ’re alive! You ’re — alive ! ” 
1 88 


IN OCTOBER 


I thought she would never stop saying it, on and 
on and on and on. “ You ’re alive, you ’re alive, 
you ’re alive.” Like a defective phonograph disk 
her shattered sense caught on that one supreme 
phrase, “You’re alive! You’re alive! You’re 
alive ! You ’re alive ! ” 

Then the blood that had blazed in her face spread 
suddenly to her nerveless hands, and she began to 
pluck at the crape ruffles on her gown. Stitch by 
stitch I heard the rip-rip-rip like the buzz of a fish- 
ing-reel. But louder than all came that madden- 
ing, monotonous cry, “You’re alive! You’re 
alive! You’re alive!” I thought her 'brain was 
broken. 

Then the Blue Serge Man sprang toward her, 
and I shut my eyes. But I caught the blessed, 
clumsy sound of a lover’s boot tripping on a ruffle 
— the crushing out of a breath — the smother of a 
half-lipped word. 

I don’t know what became of Alrik. I don’t 
know what became of Alrik’s Old Mother. But 
the Partridge Hunter, with his arm across his eyes, 
came groping for me through the red, red room. 

“ Let ’s get out of this,” he whispered. “ Let ’s 
get out of this.” 

So once again, amateurs both in sorrow and in 
gladness, the Partridge Hunter and I fled fast be- 
fore the Incomprehensible. Out we ran through 
189 


SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED 


Amy’s frost-blighted rose-garden, where no gay , 
shrill young voice challenged our desecration , out 
through the senile old apple orchard, where no sus- 
picious dog came bristling forth to question our 
innocent intrusion , up through the green-ribbon 
roadway, up through the stumbling wood-path, to 
the safe, sound, tangible, moss-covered pasture- 
bars, where the warm, brown-fur bossies, sweet- 
breathed and steaming, came lolling gently down 
through the gauzy dusk to barter their pleasant 
milk for a snug night’s lodging and a troughful of 
yellow mush. 

A dozen mysterious wood-folk crackled close 
within reach, as though all the little day-animals 
were laying aside their starched clothes for the 
night; and the whole earth teemed with the ex- 
quisite, sleepy, nestling-down sound of fur and 
feathers and tired leaves. Out in the forest depths 
somewhere a belated partridge drummed out his ex- 
cuses. Across on the nearest stone wall a tawny 
marauder went hunching his way along. It might 
have been a fox, it might have been Amy’s thrown- 
away coon-cat. Short and sharp from the house 
behind us came the fast, furious crash of Alrik’s 
frenzied young energies, chopping wood enough to 
warm a dozen houses for a dozen winters for a 
dozen new brides. But high above even the racket 
of his ax rang the sweet, wild, triumphant reso- 
190 


IN OCTOBER 


nance of some French Canadian chanson. His heart 
and his lungs seemed fairly to have exploded in 
relief. 

And over the little house, and the dark woods, 
and the mellow pasture, and the brown-fur bossies, 
broke a little, wee, tiny prick-point of a star, as 
though some Celestial Being were peeping down 
whimsically to see just what the Partridge Hunter 
and I thought of it all. 


I 9 l 













THE AMATEUR LOVER 







THE AMATEUR LOVER 





months. 


ITH every night piercing her like 
a new wound, and every morning 
stinging her like salt in that 
wound, Ruth Dudley’s broken 
engagement had dragged itself 
out for four long, hideous 
There ’s so much fever in a woman’s 


At first, to be sure, there had been no special 
outward and visible sign of heartbreak except the 
thunderstorm shadows under the girl’s blue eyes. 
Then, gradually, very gradually, those same plucky 
eyes had dulled and sickened as though every indi- 
vidual thought in her brain was festering. Later, 
an occasional loosened finger ring had clattered off 
into her untouched plate or her reeking strong cup 
of coffee. At the end of the fourth month the 
family doctor was quite busy attesting that she had 
no tubercular trouble of any sort. There never yet 
was any stethoscope invented that could successfully 
locate consumption of the affections. 

It was about this time that Ruth’s Big Brother, 
195 



THE AMATEUR LOVER 


strolling smokily into her room one evening, jumped 
back in tragic dismay at the astonishing sight that 
met his eyes. There, like some fierce young sacri- 
ficial priestess, with a very modern smutty nose and 
scorched cheeks, Ruth knelt on the hearth-rug, slam- 
ming every conceivable object that she could reach 
into the blazing fire. The soft green walls of the 
room were utterly stripped and ravished. The floor 
in every direction lay cluttered deep with books and 
pictures and clothes and innumerable small bits of 
bric-a-brac. Already the brimming fireplace leaked 
forth across the carpet in little gray, gusty flakes of 
ash and cinder. 

The Big Brother hooted right out loud. “ Why, 
Ruthy Dudley/’ he gasped. “ What are you doing? 
You look like the devil! ” 

Blissfully unconscious of smoke or smut, the girl 
pushed back the straggling blond hair from her 
eyes and grinned, with her white teeth shot like a 
bolt through her under lip to keep the grin in place. 

“ I ’m not a ‘ devil,’ ” she explained. “ I ’m a 
god! And what am I doing? I ’m creating a new 
heaven and a new earth.” 

“ You won’t have much left to create it with,” 
scoffed the Big Brother, kicking the tortured wreck 
of a straw hat farther back into the flames. 

The girl reached up impatiently and smutted her 
other hand across her eyes. “ Nothing left to cre- 
196 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


ate it with ? ” she mocked. “ Why, if I had any- 
thing left to create it with, I’d be only a — me- 
chanic ! ” 

Then, blackened like a coal-heaver and tousled 
like a Skye terrier, she picked up the scarlet bellows 
and commenced to pump a savage yellow flame into 
a writhing, half-charred bundle of letters. 

Through all the sweet, calm hours of that warm 
June night the sacrifice progressed with amazing 
rapacity. By midnight she had just finished stirring 
the fire-tongs through the ghostly, lacelike ashes of 
her wedding gown. At two o’clock her violin went 
groaning into the flames. At three her Big Brother, 
yawning sleepily back in his nightclothes, picked her 
up bodily and dumped her into her bed. He was 
very angry. “ Little Sister,” he scolded, “ there ’s 
no man living worth the fuss you ’re making over 
Aleck Reese ! ” And the little sister sat up and 
rubbed her smutty, scorched cheek against his cool, 
blue-shaven face as she tilted the drifting ashes 
from the bedspread. “ I ’m not making any 
‘ fuss/ ” she protested. “ I ’m only just — burning 
my bridges.” It was the first direct allusion that 
she had ever made to her trouble. 

Twice after that — between three o’clock and 
breakfast time — the Big Brother woke from his 
sleep with a horrid sense that the house was on fire. 
Twice between three o’clock and breakfast time he 
197 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


met the Housekeeper scuttling along the halls on the 
same sniffy errand. Once with a flickering candle- 
light Ruth herself crept out to the doorway and 
laughed at them. “ The house is n’t on fire, you 
sillies,” she cried. “ Don’t you know a burnt bridge 
when you smell it ? ” But the doctor had said quite 
distinctly: “ You must watch that little girl. Sor- 
row in the tongue will talk itself cured, if you give 
it a chance; but sorrow in the eyes has a wicked, 
wicked way now and then of leaking into the 
brain.” 

It was the Housekeeper, though, whose eyes 
looked worried and tortured at breakfast time. It 
was the Big Brother’s face that showed a bit sharp 
on the cheek-bones. Ruth herself, for the first time 
in a listless, uncollared, unbelted, unstarched month, 
came frisking down to the table as white and fresh 
and crisp as linen and starch and curls could make 
her. 

“ I ’m going to town this morning,” she an- 
nounced nonchalantly to her relieved and delighted 
hearers. The eyes that turned to her brother’s were 
almost mischievous. “ Could n’t you meet me at 
twelve o’clock,” she suggested, “ and take me off to 
the shore somewhere for lunch ? I ’ll be shopping 
on Main Street about that time, so suppose I meet 
you at Andrew Bernard’s office.” 

Half an hour later she was stealing out of the 
198 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


creaky back door into the garden, along the gray, 
pebbly gravel walk between the tall tufts of crim- 
son and purple phlox, to the little gay-faced plot 
of heart’ s-ease where the family doctor, symbolist 
and literalist, had bade her dig and delve every day 
in the good, hot, wholesome, freckly sunshine. 
Close by in the greensward an absurd pet lamb was 
tugging and bouncing at the end of its stingy tether. 
In a moment’s time the girl had transferred the 
clumsy iron tether-stake to the midst of her posy 
bed. Then she started for the gate. 

Pausing for just one repentant second with her 
hand on the gate latch, she turned and looked back 
to the ruthlessly trodden spot where the bland-eyed 
lamb stood eyeing her quizzically with his soft, 
woolly mouth fairly dripping with the tender, pre- 
cious blossoms. “ Heart’s-ease. B-a-a ! ” mocked 
the girl, with a flicker of real amusement. 
“ Heart’s-ease. B-a-a-a!” scoffed the lamb, just 
because his stomach and his tongue happened to be 
made like that. Then with a quick dodge across 
the lane she ran to meet the electric car and started 
off triumphantly for the city, shutting her faint eyes 
resolutely away from all the roadside pools and 
ponds and gleams of river whose molten, ultimate 
peace possibilities had lured her sick mind so inces- 
santly for the past dozen weeks. 

Two hours later, with a hectic spurt of energy, 
199 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


she was racing up three winding, dizzy flights of 
stairs in a ponderous, old-fashioned office build- 
ing. 

Before a door marked “ Andrew Bernard, Attor- 
ney at Law,” she stopped and waited a frightened 
moment for breath and courage. As though the 
pounding of her heart had really sounded as loud 
as it felt, the door handle turned abruptly, and a 
very tall, broad-shouldered, grave-faced young man 
greeted her with attractive astonishment. 

“ Good morning, Drew,” she began politely. 
“ Why, I have n’t seen you for a year.” Then, 
with alarming vehemence, she finished : “ Are you 

all alone? I want to talk with you.” 

Her breathlessness, her embarrassment, her fra- 
gile intensity sobered the young man instantly as he 
led her into his private office and stood for a moment 
staring inquiringly into her white face. Her mouth 
was just as he had last seen it a year ago, fresh and 
whimsical and virginal as a child’s; but her eyes 
were scorched and dazed like the eyes of a ship- 
wreck survivor or any other person who has been 
forced unexpectedly to stare upon life’s big emotions 
with the naked eye. 

“ I hear you ’ve been ill this spring,” he began 
gently. “If you wanted to talk with me, Ruthy, 
why did n’t you let me come out to the house and 
see you? Would n’t it have been easier? ” 


200 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


She shook her head. “ No,” she protested, “ I 
wanted to come here. What I ’ve got to talk about 
is very awkward, and if things get too awkward — 
why, an embarrassed guest has so much better 
chance to escape than an embarrassed host.” She 
struggled desperately to smile, but her lips twittered 
instead into a frightened quiver. With narrowing 
eyes the young man drew out his big leather chair 
for her. Then he perched himself on the corner of 
his desk and waited for her to speak. 

“ Ruthy dear,” he smiled, “ what ’s the trouble ? 
Come, tell your old chum all about it.” 

The girl scrunched her eyes up tight, like a per- 
son who starts to jump and does n’t care where he 
lands. Twice her lips opened and shut without a 
sound. Then suddenly she braced herself with an 
intense effort 

“ Drew,” she blurted out, “ do you remember — 
three years ago — you asked me to — marry — 
you?” 

“ Do I remember it ? ” gasped Drew. The edgy 
sharpness of his tone made the girl open her eyes 
and stare at him. “ Yes,” he acknowledged, “ I 
remember it.” 

The girl began to smooth her white skirts with 
excessive precision across her knees. “ What made 
you — ask me? ” she whispered. 

“ What made me ask you ? ” cried the man. 

201 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


“ What made me ask you ? Why, I asked you be- 
cause I love you.” 

The girl bent forward anxiously as though she 
were deaf. “You asked me because — what?” 
she quizzed him. 

“ Because I love you,” he repeated. 

She jumped up suddenly and ran across the room 
to him. “ Because you — love me ? ” she reiterated. 
“‘Love?’ Not ‘ loved’? Not past tense? Not 
all over and done with ? ” 

There was no mistaking her meaning. But the 
man’s face did not kindle, except with pain. Al- 
most roughly he put his hands on her shoulders and 
searched down deep into her eyes. “ Ruth,” he 
probed, “ what are you trying to do to me ? Open 
an old wound? You know I — love you.” 

The girl’s mouth smiled, but her eyes blurred wet 
with fright and tears. 

“ Would you care anything — about — marrying 
me — now? ” she faltered. 

Drew’s face blanched utterly, and the change gave 
him such a horridly foreign, alien look that the girl 
drew away from his hands and scuttled back to the 
big chair, and began all over again to smooth and 
smooth the garish white skirt across her knees. 
“ Oh, Drew, Drew,” she pleaded, “ please look like 
— you. Please — please — don’t look like anybody 
else.” 


202 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


But Drew did not smile at her. He just stood 
there and stared in a puzzled, tortured sort of way. 

“ What about Aleck Reese ? ” he began with 
fierce abruptness. 

The girl met the question with unwonted flip- 
pancy. “ I ’ve broken my engagement to Aleck 
Reese,” she said coolly. “ Broken it all to smash.” 

But the latent tremor in her voice did not satisfy 
the man. “Why did you break it?” he insisted. 
“ Is n't Aleck Reese the man you want? ” 

Her eyes wavered and fell, and then rallied sud- 
denly to Drew’s utmost question. 

“ Yes, Drew,” she answered ingenuously, “ Aleck 
Reese is the man I want, but he's not the kind of 
man I want ! ” As the telltale sentence left her lips, 
every atom of strength wilted out of her, and she 
sank back into her chair all sick and faint and shud- 
dery. 

The impulsive, bitter laugh died dumb on Drew’s 
lips. Instantly he was at her side, gentle, patient, 
compassionate, the man whom she knew so well. 
“ Do you mean,” he stammered in a startled sort of 
way, “ do you mean that — love or no love — I, I 
am the kind of man that you do want? ” 

Her hand stole shyly into his and she nodded her 
head. But her eyes were turned away from him. 

For the fraction of a second he wondered just 
what the future would hold for him and her if he 
203 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


should snatch the situation into his arms and crush 
her sorrow out against his breast. Then in that 
second’s hesitancy she shook her hair out of her eyes 
and looked up at him like a sick, wistful child. 

“ Oh, Drew/’ she pleaded, “ you ’ve never, never 
failed me yet — all my hard lessons, all my Fourth- 
of-July accidents, all my broken sleds and lost skates. 
Could n’t you help me now we ’re grown up ? I’m 
so unhappy.” 

The grimness came back to Drew’s face. 

“ Has Aleck Reese been mean to you? ” he asked. 

Her eyebrows lifted in denial. “ Oh, no — not 
specially,” she finished a trifle wearily. “ I simply 
made up my mind at last that I did n’t want to marry 
him.” 

Drew’s frown relaxed. “ Then what ’s the trou- 
ble ? ” he suggested. 

Her eyebrows arched again. “ What ’s the trou- 
ble ? ” she queried. “ Why, I happen to love him. 
That ’s all.” 

She took her hand away from Drew and began to 
smooth her skirt once more. 

“ Yes,” she repeated slowly, “ as long ago as last 
winter I made up my mind that I did n’t want to 
marry him — but I did n’t make up my courage until 
Spring. My courage, I think, is just about six 
months slower than my mind. And then, too, my 
* love-margin * was n’t quite used up, I suppose. A 
204 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


woman usually has a * love-margin/ you know, and, 
besides, there ’s always so much more impetus in a 
woman’s love. Even though she ’s hurt, even 
though she ’s heartbroken, even though, worst of 
all, she ’ .s a tiny bit bored, all her little, natural love 
courtesies go on just the same of their own mo- 
mentum, for a day or a week, or a month, or half 
a lifetime, till the love-flame kindles again — or else 
goes out altogether. Love has to be like that. But 
if I were a man, Drew, I ’d be awfully careful that 
that love-margin did n’t ever get utterly exhausted. 
Aleck, though, does n’t understand about such 
things. I smoothed his headaches just as well, and 
listened to his music just as well, so he shiftlessly 
took it for granted that I loved him just as well. 
What nonsense ! * Love ? ’ ” Her voice rose almost 
shrilly. “ ‘ Love ? ’ Bah ! What ’s love, anyway, 
but a wicked sort of hypnotism in the way that a 
mouth slants, or a cheek curves, or a lock of hair 
colors? Listen to me. If Aleck Reese were a 
woman and I were a man, I certainly would n’t 
choose his type for a sweetheart — irritable, undo- 
mestic, wild for excitement. How ’s that for a 
test? And if Aleck Reese and I were both women, 
I certainly should n’t want him for my friend. 
Oughtn’t that to decide it? Not a vital taste in 
common, not a vital interest, not a vital ideal ! ” 

She began to laugh hysterically. “ And I can't 
205 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


sleep at night for remembering the droll little way 
that his hair curls over his forehead, or the hurt, sur- 
prised look in his eyes when he ever really did get 
sorry about anything. My God! Drew, look at 
me ! ” she cried, and rolled up her sleeves to her 
elbow. The flesh was gone from her as though a 
fever had wasted her. 

The muscles in Drew’s throat began to twitch un- 
pleasantly. “ Was Aleck Reese mean to you? ” he 
persisted doggedly. 

A little faint, defiant smile flickered across her 
lips. “ Never mind, Drew,” she said, “ whether 
Aleck Reese was mean to me or not. It really 
does n’t matter. It does n’t really matter at all 
just exactly what a man does or does n’t do 
to a woman as long as, by one route or another, 
before her wedding day, he brings Eer to the 
place where she can honestly say in her heart, 
‘ This man that I want is not the kind of man that 
I want.’ Honor, loyalty, strength, gentleness — 
why, Drew, the man I marry has got to be the kind 
of man I want. 

“ I ’ve tried to be fair to Aleck,” she mused al- 
most tenderly. “ I ’ve tried to remember always 
that men are different from women, and that Aleck 
perhaps is different from most men. I ’ve tried to 
remember always that he is a musician — a real, 
real musician with all the ghastly, agonizing ex- 
206 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


tremes of temperament. I ’ve tried to remember 
always that he did n’t grow up here with us in our 
little town with all our fierce, little-town standards, 
but that he was educated abroad, that his whole 
moral, mental, and social ideals are different, that 
the admiration and adulation of — new — women 
is like the breath of life to him — that he simply 
could n’t live without it any more than I could live 
without the love of animals, or the friendship of 
children, or the wonderfulness of outdoors, all of 
which bore him to distraction. 

“ Oh, I ’ve reasoned it all out, night after night 
after night, fought it out, torn it out, that he prob- 
ably really and truly did love me quite a good deal 
— in his own way — when there was n’t anything 
else to do. But how can it possibly content a woman 
to have a man love her as well as he knows how — 
if it isn’t as well as she knows how? We won’t 
talk about — Aleck Reese’s morals,” she finished 
abruptly. “ Fickleness, selfishness, neglect, even in- 
fidelity itself, are such purely minor, incidental data 
of the one big, incurably rotten and distasteful fact 
that — such and such a man is stupid in the affec- 
tions” 

With growing weakness she sank back in her 
chair and closed her eyes. 

For an anxious moment Drew sat and watched 
her. “ Is that all ? ” he asked at last. 

207 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


She opened her eyes in surprise. “ Why, yes,” 
she said, “ that ’s all — that is, it ’s all if you under- 
stand. I ’m not complaining because Aleck Reese 
did n’t love me, but because, loving me, he was n’t 
intelligent enough to be true to me. You do un- 
derstand, don’t you? You understand that it 
was n’t because he did n’t pay his love bills, but be- 
cause he did n’t know enough to pay them. He 
took my loyalty without paying for it with his; he 
took my devotion, my tenderness, my patience, with- 
out ever, ever making any adequate return. Any 
girl ought to be able to tell in six months whether 
her lover is using her affection rightly, whether he 
is taking her affection and investing it with his 
toward their mutual happiness and home. Aleck 
invested nothing. He just took all my love that 
he could grab and squandered it on himself — al- 
ways and forever on himself. A girl, I say, ought 
to be able to tell in six months. But I am very 
stupid. It has taken me three years.” 

“Well, what do you want me to do?” Drew 
asked a bit quizzically. 

" I want you to advise me,” she said. 

“ Advise you — what f ” persisted Drew. 

The first real flicker of comedy flamed in the 
girl’s face. Her white cheeks pinked and dimpled. 
“ Why, advise me to — marry you ! ” she an- 
208 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


nounced. “ well, why not? ” She fairly hurled 
the three- word bridge across the sudden, awful 
chasm of silence that yawned before her. 

Drew’s addled mind caught the phrase dully and 
turned it over and over without attempting to 
cross on it. “Well, why not? Well, why not?” 
he kept repeating. His discomfiture filled the girl 
with hysterical delight, and she came and perched 
herself opposite him on the farther end of his desk 
and smiled at him. 

“ It seems to me perfectly simple,” she argued. 
“ Without any doubt or question you certainly are 
the kind of man whom I should like to marry. 
You are true and loyal and generous and rugged 
about things. And you like the things that I like. 
And I like the people that you like. And, most of 
anything in the world, you are clever in the affec- 
tions. You are heart-wise as well as head- wise. 
Why, even in the very littlest, silliest thing that 
could possibly matter, you would n’t — for instance 
— remember George Washington’s birthday and 
forget mine. And you would n’t go away on a 
lark and leave me if I was sick, any more than 
you ’d blow out the gas. And you would n’t — 
hurt me about — other women — any more than 
you ’d eat with your knife.” Impulsively she 
reached over and patted his hand with the tips of 
14 209 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


her fingers. “ As far as I can see,” she teased, 
“ there ’s absolutely no fault in you that matters 
to me except that I don’t happen to love you.” 

Quick as her laugh the tears came scalding back 
to her eyes. 

“ Why, Drew,” she hurried on desperately, 
“ people seem to think it ’s a dreadful thing to 
marry a man whom you don’t love; but nobody 
questions your marrying any kind of a man if you 
do love him. As far as I can make out, then, 
it ’s the love that matters, not the man. Then why 
not love the right man?” She began to smile 
again. “ So here and now, sir, I deliberately choose 
to love you.” 

But Drew’s fingers did not even tighten over 
hers. 

“ I want to be a happy woman,” she pleaded. 
“ Why, I ’m only twenty-two. I can’t let my life 
be ruined now. There ’s got to be some way out. 
And I ’m going to find that way out if I have to 
crawl on my hands and knees for a hundred years. 
I ’m luckier than some girls. I ’ve got such a shin- 
ing light to aim for.” 

Almost roughly Drew pulled his hand away, the 
color surging angrily into his cheeks. “ I ’m no 
shining light,” he protested hotly, “ and you shall 
never, never come crawling on your hands and 
knees to me.” 


210 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


“ Yes, I shall,” whispered the girl. “ I shall 
come creeping very humbly, if you want me. And 
you do want me, don’t you? Oh, please advise 
me. Oh, please play you are my Father or my Big 
Brother and advise me to — marry you ” 

Drew laughed in spite of himself. “ Play I was 
your Father or your Big Brother? ” Mimicry was 
his one talent. “ Play I was your Father or your 
Big Brother and advise you to marry me? ” 

Instantly his fine, straight brows came beetling 
down across his eyes in a fierce paternal scrutiny. 
Then, quick as a wink, he had rumpled his hair 
and stuck out his chest in a really startling imita- 
tion of Big Brother’s precious, pompous impor- 
tance. But before Ruth could clap her hands his 
face flashed back again into its usual keen, sad 
gravity, and he shook his head. “ Yes,” he de- 
liberated, “ perhaps if I truly were your Father or 
your Brother, I really should advise you to marry 
— me — not because I amount to anything and am 
worth it, but because I honestly believe that I should 
be good to you — and I know that Aleck Reese 
would n’t be. But if I ’m to advise you in my own 
personal capacity — no, Ruthy, I don’t want to 
marry you ! ” 

“What? What?” Staggering from the desk, 
she turned and faced him, white as her dress, 
blanched to her quivering lips. 

21 1 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


But Drew’s big shoulders blocked her frenzied 
effort to escape. 

“ Don’t go away like that, Little Girl,” he said. 
“ You don’t understand. It is n’t a question of 
caring. You know I care. But don’t you, don’t 
you understand that a man does n’t like to marry a 
woman who does n’t love him ? ” 

Her face brightened piteously. “ But I will love 
you ? ” she protested. “ I will love you. I prom- 
ise. I promise you faithfully — I will love you — 
if you ’ll only give me just a little time.” The old 
flicker of mischief came back to her eyes, and she 
began to count on her fingers. “ Let me see,” she 
said. “ It ’s June now — June, July, August, Sep- 
tember, October, November — six months. I 
promise you that I will love you by November.” 

“ I don’t believe it.” Drew fairly slashed the 
words into the air. 

Instantly the hurt, frightened look came back to 
her eyes. “ Why, Drew,” she whispered, “ if it 
were money that I wanted, if I were starving, or 
sick, or any all-alone anything, you would n’t re- 
fuse to help me just because you could n’t possibly 
see ahead just how I was ever going to pay you. 
Drew, I ’m very unhappy and frightened and lost- 
feeling. I just want to borrow your love. I prom- 
ise you I will pay it back to you. You won’t be 
sorry. You won’t. You won’t!” 


212 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


Drew’s hand reached up and smothered the words 
on her lips. “ You can’t borrow my love,” he 
said sternly. “ It ’s yours, always, every bit of it. 
But I won’t marry you unless you love me. I tell 
you it is n’t fair to you.” 

Impulsively she took his hand and led him back 
to the big chair and pushed him gently into it, and 
perched herself like a little child on a pile of bulky 
law books at his feet. The eyes that looked up to 
his were very hopeful. 

“ Don’t you think, Drew,” she argued, “ that 
just being willing to marry you is love enough?” 

He scanned her face anxiously for some inner, 
hidden meaning to her words, some precious, latent 
confession; but her eyes were only blue, and just a 
little bit shy. 

She stooped forward suddenly, and took Drew’s 
hand and brushed it across her cheek to the edge 
of her lips. “ I feel so safe with you, Drew,” she 
whispered, “ so safe, and comforted always. Oh, 
I ’m sure I can teach you how to make me love 
you — and you ’re the only man in the world that 
I ’m willing to teach.” Her chin stiffened suddenly 
with renewed stubbornness. “ You are the Harbor 
that was meant for me, and Aleck Reese is nothing 
but a — Storm. If you know it, and I know it, 
what ’s the use of dallying? ” 

Drew’s solemn eyes brightened. “ Do you truly 
213 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


think,” he said, “that Aleck Reese is only an ac- 
cident that happened to you on your way to me ? ” 

She nodded her head. Weakness and tears were 
only too evidently overtaking her brave little the- 
ories. 

“ And there ’s something else, too,” she con- 
fided tremulously. “ My head is n’t right. I have 
such hideous dreams when I do get to sleep. I 
dream of drowning myself, and it feels good; and 
I dream of jumping off high buildings, and it feels 
good; and I dream of throwing myself under rail- 
road trains, and it feels good. And I see the 
garish announcement in the morning papers, and 
I picture how Uncle Terry would look when he 
got the news, and I cry and cry and cry, and it feels 
good. Oh, Drew, I ’m so bored with life ! It is n’t 
right to be so bored with life. But I can’t seem 
to help it. Nothing in all the world has any mean- 
ing any more. Flowers, sunshine, moonlight — 
everything I loved has gone stale. There ’s no 
taste left to anything; there ’s no fragrance, there ’s 
no rhyme. Drew, I could stand the sorrow part 
of it, but I simply can’t stand the emptiness. I 
tell you I can't stand it. I wish I were dead ; and, 
Drew, there are so many, many easy ways all the 
time to make oneself dead. I ’m not safe. Oh, 
please take me and make me safe. Oh, please take 
me and make me want to live ! ” 

214 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


Driven almost distracted by this final appeal 
to all the chivalrous love in his nature. Drew 
jumped up and paced the floor. Perplexity, com- 
bativeness, and ultimate defeat flared already in his 
haggard face. 

The girl sensed instantly the advantage that she 
had gained. “Of course,” she persisted, “of 
course I see now, all of a sudden, that I ’m not 
offering you very much in offering you a wife who 
doesn’t love you. You are quite right; of course 
I should n’t make you a very good wife at first — 
maybe not for quite a long, long time. Probably 
it would all be too hard and miserable for 
you — ” 

Drew interrupted her fiercely. “ Great heav- 
ens ! ” he cried out, “ my part would be easy, com- 
fortable, serene, interesting, compared to yours. 
Don’t you know it ’s nothing except sad to be shut 
up in the same house, in the same life, with a per- 
son you love who does n’t love you? Nothing but 
sad, I tell you ; and there ’s no special nervous 
strain about being sad. But to be shut up day 
and night — as long as life lasts — with a person 
who takes the impudent liberty of loving you 
against your wish to be loved — oh, the spiritual 
distastefulness of it, and the physical enmity, and 
the ghastly, ghastly ennui ! That ’s your part of 
it. Flower or book or jewel or caress, no agoniz- 

215 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


ing, heart-breaking, utterly wholesome effort to 
please, but just one hideously chronic, mawkishly 
conscientious effort to be pleased, to act pleased — 
though it blast your eyes and sear your lips — to 
look pleased. I tell you I won’t have it! ” 

“ I understand all that,” said Ruth gravely. “ I 
understand it quite perfectly. But underneath it 
all — I would rather — you had taken me in your 
arms — as though I were a little, little hurt girl — 
and comforted me — ” 

But before Drew’s choking throat-cry had 
reached his lips she had sprung from her seat and 
was facing him defiantly. Across her face flared 
suddenly for the first time the full, dark flush of 
one of Life’s big tides, and the fear in her hands 
reached up and clutched at Drew’s shoulders. The 
gesture tipped her head back like a fagged swim- 
mer’s struggling in the water. 

“ I am pleading for my life, Drew,” she gasped, 
“ for my body, for my soul, for my health, for 
my happiness, for home, for safety ! ” 

He snatched her suddenly into his arms. “ My 
God ! Ruth,” he cried, “ what do you want me to 
do?” 

Triumph came like a holiday laugh to her hag- 
gard face. 

“ What do I want you to do ? ” she dimpled. 
“ Why, I want you to come with me now and get 
216 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 

a license. I want to be married right away this 
afternoon.” 

“ What ! ” Drew hurled the word at her like 
a bomb, but it did not seem to explode. 

Laughingly, flushingly, almost delightedly, she 
stood and watched the anger rekindle in his face. 

“ Do you think I am going to take advantage of 
you like this?” he asked hotly. “You would 
probably change your mind to-morrow and be very, 
very sorry — ” 

She tossed her head. It was a familiar little 
gesture. “ I fully and confidently expect to be 
sorry to-morrow,” she affirmed cheerfully. 
“ That ’s why I want to be married to-day, this 
afternoon, this minute, if possible, before I have 
had any chance to change my mind.” 

Then, with unexpected abruptness, she shook her 
recklessness aside and walked back to him child- 
ishly, pulling a long, loose wisp of hair across her 
face. “ See,” she said. “ Smell the smoke in my 
hair. It ’s the smoke from my burned bridges. I 
sat up nearly all night and burned everything I 
owned, everything that could remind me of Aleck 
Reese, all my dresses, all my books, all my keep- 
sakes, all my doll houses that ever grew up into 
dreams. So if you decide to marry me I shall be 
very expensive. You ’ll have to take me just as 
I am — quite a little bit crumpled, not an extra 
217 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


collar, not an extra hairpin, not anything. Aleck 
Reese either loved or hated everything I owned. 
I have n’t left a single bridge on which one of 
my thoughts could even crawl back to him again — ” 

Half quizzically, half caressingly, Drew stooped 
down and brushed his lips across the lock of hair. 
Fragrant as violets, soft as the ghost of a kiss, the 
little curl wafted its dearness into his senses. But 
ranker than violets, harsher than kisses, lurked the 
blunt, unmistakable odor of ashes. 

He laughed. And the laugh was bitter as gall. 
“ Burning your bridges,” he mused. “ It ’s a good 
theory. But if I take your life into my bungling 
hands and sweat my heart out trying to make you 
love me, and come home every night to find you 
crying with fear and heartbreak, will you still pro- 
test that the sting in your eyes is nothing in the 
world except the smudge from those burnt bridges ? 
Will you promise?” 

With desperate literalness she clutched at the 
phrase. Everything else in the room began to whirl 
round and round like prickly stars. “ I promise, I 
promise,” she gasped. Then sight — not air, but 
just sight — seemed to be smothered right out of 
her, and her brain reeled, and she wilted down un- 
conscious on the floor. 

Cursing himself for a brute, Drew snatched her 
up in a little, white, crumpled heap and started for 
218 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 

the window. Halfway there, the office door opened 
abruptly and Ruth’s Big Brother stood on the 
threshold. Surprise, anxiety, ultimate relief chased 
dashingly across the newcomer’s face, and in an in- 
stant both men were working together over the limp 
little body. 

“ Well, old man,” said the Big Brother, “ I ’m 
glad she was here safe with you when she fainted.” 
His spare arm clapped down affectionately across 
Drew’s shoulders and jarred Drew’s fingers brownly 
against the death-like pallor of the girl’s throat. 
The Big Brother gave an ugly gasp. “ Damn 
Aleck Reese,” he said. 

Drew’s eyes shut perfectly tight as though he 
was smitten by some unbearable agony. Then sud- 
denly, without an instant’s warning, he pulled him- 
self together and burst out laughing uproariously 
like a schoolboy. 

“ Oh, what ’s the use of damning Aleck Reese? ” 
he cried. “ Aleck Reese is as stale an issue as yes- 
terday morning’s paper. If you ’ve no particular 
objection to me as a brother-in-law as well as a 
tennis chum, Ruth and I were planning to marry 
each other this afternoon. Maybe I was just a little 
bit too vehement about it.” 

Three hours later, in a dusty, musty, mid-week 
church vestry, an extraordinarily white and extraor- 
219 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


dinarily vivacious girl was quite busy assuring a 
credulous minister and a credulous sexton and a 
credulous Big Brother that she would love till death 
hushed her the perfectly incredulous bridegroom 
who stood staring down upon her like a very tall 
man in a very short dream. 

And then, because neither groom nor bride could 
think of anything specially married to say to each 
other, they kidnapped Big Brother and bore him 
away in an automobile to a nervous, rollicking, won- 
derfully entertaining “ shore dinner,” where they 
sat at an open window round a green-tiled table in 
a marvelously glowering, ice-cool, artificial grotto, 
and ate bright scarlet lobsters while the great, hot, 
blowzy yellow moon came wallowing up out of the 
night-shadowed sea, and the thrilly, thumpy brass 
band played “ I Love You So ” ; and the only, only 
light in the whole vague, noisy room seemed to be 
Big Brother’s beaming, ecstatic face gleaming like 
some glad phosphorescent thing through the clouds 
of murky tobacco smoke. 

Not till the wines and dines and roses and posies 
and chatter and clatter were all over, and the auto- 
mobile had carried Big Brother off to his railroad 
station and whisked the bride and groom back to 
the wobbly city pavements, did Drew begin to re- 
alize that the frolicking, jesting, crisp-tongued fig- 
ure beside him had wilted down into a piteous little 
220 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


hunch of fear. Stooping to push her slippery new 
suit case closer under her feet, he caught the sharp, 
shuddering tremor of her knees, and as the automo- 
bile swayed finally into the street that led to his 
apartment, her lungs seemed to crumple up in a 
paroxysm of coughing. Under the garish lights 
that marked his apartment-house doorway her slight 
figure drooped like a tired flower, and the footsteps 
that tinkled behind him along the stone corridor 
rang in his ears with a dear, shy, girlish reluctance. 
The elevator had stopped running. One flight, two 
flights, three, four, five they toiled up the harsh, 
cool, metallic stairway. Four times Ruth stopped 
to get her breath, and twice to tie her shoe. Drew 
laughed to himself at the delicious subterfuge of it. 

Then at the very top of the strange, gloomy, mid- 
night building, when Drew’s nervous fingers fum- 
bled a second with his door-lock, without the slight- 
est possible warning she reached out suddenly with 
one mad, frenzied impulse and struck the key from 
his hand. To his startled eyes she turned a face 
more wild, more agonized than any terror he had 
ever dreamed in his most hideous, sweating night- 
mare. Instantly her hands went clutching out to 
him. 

“ Oh, Drew, for God’s sake take me home! ” she 
gasped. “ What have I done ? What have I done ? 
What have I done ? Oh, Aleck ! ” 


221 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


Wrenching himself free from her hands, Drew 
dropped down on the floor and began to hunt around 
for the key. The blood surged into his head like a 
hot tide, and he felt all gritty-lunged and smothered, 
as though he were crawling under water. After a 
minute he stumbled to his feet and slipped the recre- 
ant key smoothly into the lock, and swung his door 
wide open, and turned back to Ruth. She stood 
facing him defiantly, her eyes blazing, her poor 
hands twisting. 

Drew nodded toward the door, and shoved the 
suit case with his foot across the threshold. His 
face was very stern and set. 

“You want me to take you ‘home’?” he said. 
“This is home. What do you mean? Take you 
back to your Brother’s house ? You can’t go back to 
your Brother’s house on your wedding day. It 
would n’t be fair to me. And I won’t help you do 
an unfair thing even to me. You ’ve got to give 
me a chance ! ” 

He nodded again toward the open door, but the 
girl did not budge. His face brightened suddenly, 
and he stepped back to where she was standing, and 
lifted her up in his arms and swung her to his shoul- 
der and stumbled through the pitch-black doorway. 
“ Do you remember,” he cried, “ the day at your 
grammar-school picnic when I carried you over the 
railroad trestle because the locomotive that was 


222 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


swooping down upon us round the curve had scared 
all the starch out of your legs? Look out for your 
head now, honey, and I ’ll give you a very good imi- 
tation of a cave man bringing home his bride.” 

In another moment he had switched a blaze of 
electric light into his diminutive library, and de- 
posited his sobbing burden none too formally in the 
big easy chair that blocked almost all the open space 
between his desk and his bookcases. “ What ! 
Are n’t you laughing, too ? ” he cried in mock alarm. 
But the crumpled little figure in the big chair did not 
answer to his raillery. 

Until it seemed as though he would totter from 
his wavering foothold, Drew stood and watched her 
dumbly. Then a voice that sounded strange even to 
himself spoke out of his lips. 

“ Ruth — come here,” he said. 

She raised her rumpled head in astonishment, 
gaged for a throbbing instant the new authoritative 
glint in his eyes, and then slipped cautiously out of 
her chair and came to him, reeking with despair. 
For a second they just stood and stared at each 
other, white face to white face, a map of anger con- 
fronting a map of fear. 

“ You understand,” said Drew, “ that to-day, by 
every moral, legal, religious right and rite, you have 
delivered your life over utterly into my hands?” 
His voice was like ice. 


223 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


“ Yes, I understand,” she answered feebly, with 
the fresh tears gushing suddenly into her eyes. 

Drew’s mouth relaxed. “ You understand? ” he 
repeated. “ Well — forget it ! And never, never, 
never, as long as you and I are together, never, I 
say, understand anything but this : you can cry about 
Aleck Reese all you want to, but you sha’n’t cry 
about me. You can count on that anyway.” 
He started to smile, but his mouth twitched instead 
with a wince of pain. “ And I thought I could 
really bring you heart’s-ease,” he scoffed. “ Heart’s- 
ease? Bah!” 

“ Heart’s-ease. Bah ! ” The familiar phrase ex- 
ploded Ruth’s inflammable nerves into hysterical 
laughter. “ Why, that ’s what the lamb said,” she 
cried, “ when I fed him on my pansy posies. 
‘ Heart’s-ease. B-a-h! ’ ” And her sudden burst of 
even unnatural delight cleared her face for the mo- 
ment of all its haggard tragedy, and left her once 
more just a very fragile, very plaintive, very help- 
less, tear-stained child. “ You b-a-a exactly like 
the lamb,” she suggested with timid, snuffling pleas- 
antry; and at the very first suspicion of a reluctant 
twinkle at the corner of Drew’s eyes she reached up 
her trembling little hands to his shoulders and held 
him like a vise with a touch so light, so faint, so 
timorous that it could hardly have detained the 
shadow of a humming-bird. 

224 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


For a moment she stared exploringly round the 
unfamiliar, bright little room crowded so horribly, 
cruelly close with herself, her mistake, and the life- 
long friend loomed so suddenly and undesirably 
into a man. Then with a quick, shuddery blink her 
eyes came flashing back wetly and wistfully to the 
unsolved, inscrutable face before her. Her fingers 
dug themselves frantically into his cheviot shoul- 
ders. 

“ Oh, Drew, Drew/’ she blurted out, “ I am 
so very — very — very — frightened ! Won’t you 
please take me and play you are my — Mother? ” 

“ Play I am your Mother ? Play I am your 
Mother! ” The phrase ripped out of Drew’s lips 
like an oath, and twitched itself just in time in- 
to explosive, husky mirth. “ Play I am your 
Mother ? ” The teeniest grimace over his left shoul- 
der outlined the soft silken swish and tug of a lady’s 
train. A most casual tap at his belt seemed to 
achieve instantly the fashionable hour-glass outline 
of feminine curves. “Play I am your Mother!” 
He smiled and, stooping down, took Ruth’s scared 
white face between his hands, and his smile was as 
bright — and just about as pleasant — as a zigzag 
of lightning from a storm-black sky. 

“ Ruthy dear,” he said, “ I don’t feel very much 
like your Mother. Now if it was a cannibal that 
you wanted, or a pirate, or a kidnapper, or a body- 
15 225 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


snatcher, or a general all-round robber of widows 
and orphans, why, here I am, all dressed and trained 
and labeled for the part. But a Mother — ” The 
smile went zigzagging again across his face just as a 
big, wet, scalding tear came trickling down the girl’s 
cheek into his fingers. The feeling of that tear 
made his heart cramp unpleasantly. “ Oh, hang it 
all,” he finished abruptly, “ what does a Mother do, 
anyway? ” 

The little white face in his hands flooded instantly 
with a great desolation. “ I don’t know,” she 
moaned wearily. “ I never knew.” 

For some inexplainable reason Aleck Reese’s dev- 
ilish, insolent beauty flaunted itself suddenly before 
Drew’s vision, and he gave a bitter gasp, and turned 
away fiercely, and brushed his arm potently across 
his forehead as though Sex, after all, were nothing 
but a trivial mask that fastened loosely to the ears. 

When he turned round again, his conquered face 
had that strange, soft, shining, translucent wonder- 
look in it which no woman all her life long may reap 
twice from a man’s face. Tenderly, serenely, un- 
caressingly, without passion and without playful- 
ness, he picked up his sad little bride and carried her 
back to the big, roomy, restful chair, and snuggled 
her down in his long arms, with her smoke-scented 
hair across his cheek, and told her funny, giggly 
little stories, and crooned her funny, sleepy 
226 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


little songs, till her shuddering sobs soothed them- 
selves — oh, so slowly — into lazy, languid, bashful 
little smiles, and the lazy, languid, bashful 
little smiles droned off at last into nestling, con- 
tented little sighs, and the nestling, contented little 
sighs blossomed all of a sudden into merciful, peace- 
ful slumber. 

Then, when the warm, gray June dawn was just 
beginning to flush across the roofs of the city, he 
put her softly down and slipped away, and took his 
smallest military brushes, and his smallest dressing- 
gown, and his smallest slippers, and carried them 
out to his diminutive guest-room. “ It is n’t a very 
big little guest-room,” he mused disconsolately, “ but 
then, she is n’t a very big little guest. It will hold 
her, I guess, as long as she ’s willing to stay.” 

“ As long as she ’s willing to stay.” The phrase 
puckered his lips. Again Aleck Reese’s face flashed 
before him in all its amazing beauty and magical 
pathos, a face this time staring across a tiny, ornate 
cafe table into the jaded, world-wise eyes of some 
gorgeous woman of the theatrical demi-monde. At 
the vision Drew’s shoulders squared suddenly as 
though for a fair fight to the finish, and then wilted 
down with equal abruptness as his eyes met acci- 
dentally in the mirror his own plain, matter-of-fact 
reflection. The sight fairly mocked him. There 
was no beauty there. No magic. No brilliance. 

227 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


No talent. No compelling moodiness. No possible 
promise of “ Love and Fame and Far Lands/’ 
Nothing. Just eyes and nose and mouth and hair 
and an ugly baseball scar on his left cheek. Merci- 
ful heavens! What had he to fight Aleck Reese 
with, except the only two virtues that a man may 
not brag of — a decently clean life and an unstaled 
love ! 

Grinning to rekindle his courage, he started tip- 
toeing back along the hall to his bedroom and his 
kitchen, and rolled up his sleeves and began to clean 
house most furiously ; for even if you are quite des- 
perately in love, and a fairly good man besides, it is 
just a little bit crowded-feeling and disconcerting to 
have the lady walk unannounced right into your life 
and your neckties and your pictures, to say nothing 
of your last week’s unwashed cream-jars. 

Frantically struggling with his coffee-pot at seven 
o’clock, he had almost forgotten his minor troubles 
when a little short, gaspy breath sound made him 
look up. Huddling her tired-out dress into the am- 
ple folds of his dressing-gown, Ruth stood watching 
him bashfully. 

“ Hello ! ” he said. “ Who are you ? ” 

“ I ’m — Mrs. — Andrew Bernard, attorney at 
law,” she announced with stuttering nonchalance, 
and started off exploringly for the cupboard to find 
Drew’s best green Canton china to deck the kitchen 
228 







“ That will help you remember where your mouth is ” 











( 



% 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


breakfast table. All through the tortuous little meal 
she sat in absolute tongue-tied gravity, carving her 
omelet into a hundred infinitesimal pieces and sip- 
ping like a professional coffee-taster at Drew’s over- 
rank concoction. Only once did her solemn face 
lighten with an inspirational flash that made Drew’s 
heart jump. Then, “ Oh, Drew,” she exclaimed, 
“ do you think you could go out to the house to-day 
and see if they fed the lamb? ” 

“ No, I don’t,” said Drew bluntly, and poured 
himself out his fifth cup of coffee. 

After breakfast, all the time that he was shav- 
ing, she came and sat on the edge of a table and 
watched him with the same maddening gravity, and 
when he finally started off for his office she followed 
him down the whole length of his little hallway. 
“ I like my cave ! ” she volunteered with sudden so- 
ciability, and then with a great, pink-flushing wave 
of consciousness she lifted up her face to him and 
stammered, “ Do I kiss you good-by ? ” 

Drew shook his head and laughed. “ No,” he 
said, “ you don’t even have to do that ; I ’m not 
much of a kisser,” and turned abruptly and grabbed 
at the handle of the door. 

But before he had crossed the threshold she 
reached out and pulled him back for a moment, and 
he had to stoop down very far to hear what she 
wanted to tell him. “ It ’s nothing much, Drew,” 
22 9 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 

she whispered. “ It ’s nothing much at all. I just 
wanted to say that — considering how strong they 
are, and how — wild — and strange — I think men 
are — very — gentle creatures. Thank you.” And 
in another instant she had gone back alone to face 
by crass daylight the tragedy that she had brought 
into three people’s lives. 

Certainly in all the days and weeks that followed, 
Drew never failed to qualify as a “ gentle creature.” 
Not a day passed at his office that he did not tele- 
phone home with the most casual-sounding pleas- 
antry, “ Is everything all right ? Any burnt-bridge 
smoke in the air ? ” Usually, clear as his own voice, 
and sometimes even with a little giggle tucked on 
at the end, the answer came, “ Yes, everything ’s 
all right.” But now and then over that telephone 
wire a minor note flashed with unmistakably trem- 
ulous vibration: “ N-o, Drew. Oh, could you 
come right home — and take me somewhere ? ” 

Drew’s brown cheeks hollowed a bit, perhaps, as 
time went on, but always smilingly, always frankly 
and jocosely, he met the occasionally recurrent 
emergencies of his love-life. Underneath his smile 
and underneath his frankness his original purpose 
never flinched and never wavered. With growing 
mental intimacy and absolute emotional aloofness 
he forced day by day the image and the conscious- 
ness of his personality upon the girl’s plastic mind; 

230 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


his picture, for instance, as a matter of course for 
her locket; his favorite, rather odd, colors for her 
clothes; his sturdy, adventuresome, fleet-footed 
opinions to run ahead and break in all her strange 
new thought-grounds for her. More than this, in 
every possible way that showed to the world he 
stamped her definitely as the most carefully cher- 
ished wife among all her young married mates. 

At first the very novelty of the situation had fed 
his eyes with rapture and fired the girl’s face with 
a feverish excitement almost as pink as happiness. 
The surprise and congratulations of their friends, 
the speech of the janitor, the floral offering of the 
elevator boy, the long procession of silver spoons 
and cut-glass dishes, had filled their days with in- 
terest and laughter. Trig in her light muslin house 
gowns or her big gingham aprons, Ruth fluttered 
blissfully around her house like a new, brainy sort 
of butterfly. By some fine, instinctive delicacy, 
shrewder than many women’s love, she divined and 
forestalled Drew’s domestic tastes and preferences, 
and lined his simplest, homespun needs with all the 
quiver and sheen of silk. Resting his weariness, 
spurring his laziness; equally quick to divine the 
need of a sofa pillow or a joke; equally interested 
in his food and his politics; always ready to talk, 
always ready to keep still; cramping her free sub- 
urban ways into his hampered accommodations; 

231 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 

missing her garden and her pets and her piazzas 
without ever acknowledging it — she tried in every 
plausible way except loving to compensate Drew for 
the wrong she had done him. 

Only once did Drew’s smoldering self-control slip 
the short leash he had set for himself. Just once, 
round the glowing coziness of a rainy-night open 
fire, he had dropped his book slammingly on the 
floor and reached out his hand to her soft hair that 
brightened like bronze in the lamplight. “ Are you 
happy ?” he had probed before he could fairly bite 
the words back; and she had jumped up, and tossed 
her hair out of her eyes, and laughed as she started 
for the kitchen. “ No, I ’m not exactly happy,” 
she had said. “ But I ’m awfully — interested.” 

So June budded into July, and July bloomed into 
August, and August wilted into September, and 
September brittled and crisped and flamed at last 
into October. Tennis and boating and picnics and 
horseback riding filled up the edges of the days. 
Little by little the bright, wholesome red came back 
to live in Ruth’s rounding cheeks. Little by little 
the good steady gleam of normal interests sup- 
planted the wild will-o’-the-wisp lights in her eyes. 
Little by little her accumulating possessions began 
to steel shyly out from her tiny room and make 
themselves boldly at home in the places where hith- 
erto they had ventured only as guests. Her work- 
232 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


basket crowded Drew’s tobacco-jar deliberately 
from the table to the top of the bookcase. Her 
daring hands nonchalantly replaced a brutally clever 
cartoon with a soft-toned sketch of a little child. 
Once, indeed, an ostentatiously freshly laundered 
dress, all lace and posies and ruffles, went and hung 
itself brazenly in Drew’s roomy closet right next 
to his fishing clothes. 

And then, just as Drew thought that at last he 
saw Happiness stop and turn and look at him a bit 
whimsically, Aleck Reese came back to town — 
Aleck Reese, not as Fate should have had him, 
drunken with flattery, riotous with revelry, chasing 
madly some new infatuation, but Aleck Reese 
sobered, dazed, temporarily purified by the shock of 
his loss, if not by the loss itself. 

For a week, blissfully unconscious of any cause, 
Drew had watched with growing perplexity and 
anxiety the sudden, abrupt flag in the girl’s health 
and spirits and general friendliness. Flowers, 
fruit, candy, books, excursion plans had all succes- 
sively, one by one, failed to rouse either her interest 
or her ordinary civility. And then one night, drag- 
ging home extra late from a worried, wearisome 
day at the office, faint for his dinner, sick for his 
sleep, he found the apartment perfectly dark and 
cheerless, the fire unlighted, the table unset, and 
Ruth herself lying in a paroxysm of grief on the 
233 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


floor under his stumbling feet. With his dizzy 
head reeling blindly, and his hands shaking like an 
aspen, he picked her up and tried to carry her to 
the couch; but she wrenched herself away from him, 
and walked over to the window and halfway back 
again before she spoke. 

“ Aleck Reese has come home,” she announced 
dully, and reached up unthinkingly and turned a 
blast of electric light full on her ghastly face. 

Drew clutched at the back of the nearest chair. 
“ Have you seen him ? ” he almost whispered. 

The girl nodded. “ Yes. He ’s been here a 
week. I Ve seen him twice. Once — all day at the 
tennis club — and this afternoon I met him on the 
street, and he came home with me to get — a book.” 

“ Why did n’t you tell me before that he was 
here? ” 

She shrugged her shoulders wearily. “ I thought 
his coming was n’t going to matter,” she faltered, 
“ but—” 

“ But what ? ” said Drew. 

Her arms fell limply down to her sides and her 
chin began to quiver. 

“ He kissed me this afternoon,” she stammered, 
“ and I — kissed him. And, worse than that, we 
were both — glad.” 

Trying to brush the fog away from his eyes, 
Drew almost sprang across the room at her, and she 
234 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


gave a queer little cry and fled, not away from him, 
but right into his arms, as though there was her only 
haven. “ Would you be apt to hurt me?” she 
gasped with a funny-sad sort of inquisitiveness. 
Then she backed away and held out her hand like a 
man’s to Drew’s shaking fingers. “ I ’m very much 
ashamed,” she said, “ about this afternoon. Oh, 
very, very, very much ashamed. I have n’t ever 
been a really good wife to you, you know, but I 
never have cheated before until to-day. I promise 
you faithfully that it sha’n’t happen again. But, 
Drew ” — her face flushed utterly crimson — “ but, 
Drew — I honestly think that it had to happen to- 
day.” 

Drew’s tortured eyes watched her keenly for a 
second and then his look softened. “ Will you 
please tell Aleck,” he suggested, “ that you told me 
all about it and that I — laughed ? ” 

It was not till some time in December, however, 
after a nervous, evasive, speechless sort of week, 
that Ruth appeared abruptly one day at Drew’s of- 
fice, looking for all the world like the frightened 
child who had sought him out there the June be- 
fore. 

“ Drew, you ’re five years older than I am, are n’t 
you ? ” she began disconnectedly. “ And you ’ve 
always been older than I am, and stronger than I 
am, and wiser than I am. And you’ve always 
235 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


gone ahead in school and play and everything, and 
learned what you wanted to and then come back — 
and gotten me. And it always made everything — 
oh, so much easier for me — and I thought it was a 
magic scheme that simply could n’t fail to work. 
But I ’m afraid I ’m not quite as smart as I used to 
be — I can’t seem to catch up with you this time.” 
“What do you mean?” said Drew. 

She began to fidget with her gloves. “ Do you 
know what month it is ? ” she asked abruptly. 

“ Why, yes,” said Drew, just a bit drearily. 
“ It ’s December. What of it? ” 

Her eyes blurred, but she kept them fixed steadily 
on her husband. “ Why, don’t you remember,” she 
gasped, “ that when we were married I promised 
you faithfully that I would love you within six 
months? The six months were up in November — 
but I find I ’m not quite ready — yet. You ’ll have 
to give me a little more time,” she pleaded. 
“ You ’ll have to renew my love-loan. Will you? ” 
Drew slammed down his law books and forced 
his mouth into a grin. “ I ’d forgotten all about 
that arrangement,” he said. “Of course I ’ll renew 
what you call your ‘ love-loan/ Really and truly I 
did n’t expect you to love me before a full year was 
up. Heart-wounds don’t ever even begin to heal 
until their first anniversaries are passed — all the 
Christmases and birthdays and Easters. And, 
236 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


really, I ’d quite as soon anyway that you did n’t love 
me till Spring,” he added casually. “ I ’m so hide- 
ously busy and worried just now with business 
things.” 

She gave him an odd little look that barely grazed 
his face and settled flutteringly on the book in his 
hand. It was a ponderous-looking treatise on “ The 
Annulment of Marriage.” Her heart began to 
pound furiously. “ Drew ! ” she blurted out, “ I 
simply can’t stand things any longer. I shall go 
mad. I ’ve tried and tried and tried to be good, and 
it ’s no use. I must be stupid. I must be a fool. 
But I want to go home ! ” 

“ All right,” said Drew very quietly, “ you — 
can — go — home.” 

In another instant, without good-by or regret, she 
had flashed out of the office and was racing down 
the stairs. Halfway to the street she missed her 
handkerchief, and started reluctantly back to get it. 
The office door was locked, but she tiptoed round 
to a private side entrance and opened the door very 
cautiously and peeped in. 

Prostrate across his great, cluttered desk, Drew, 
the serene, the laughing, the self-sufficient, lay sob- 
bing like a woman. 

Startled as though she had seen a ghost, the girl 
backed undetected out of the door, and closed it 
very softly behind her, nor did she stop tiptoeing 
237 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


until she had reached the street floor. Then, drop- 
ping down weak-kneed upon the last step, she sat 
staring out into the dingy patch of snow that flared 
now and then through the swinging doorway. 
Somewhere out in that vista Aleck Reese was wait- 
ing and watching for her. Two or three of her hus- 
band’s business acquaintances paused and accosted 
her. “ Anything the matter ? ” they probed. 

“ Oh, no,” she answered brightly. “ I ’m just 
thinking.” 

After a while she jumped up abruptly and stole 
back through a box-cluttered hall to the rear door 
of the building, and slid out unnoticed into a side 
street, gathering her great fur coat — Drew’s latest 
gift — closer and closer around her shivering body. 
The day was gray and bleak and scarily incomplete, 
like the work of some amateur creator who had 
slipped up on the one essential secret of how to 
make the sun shine. The jingliest sound of sleigh- 
bells, the reddest flare of holiday shop windows, 
could not cheer her thoughts away from the sting- 
ing, shuddering memory of Drew’s crumpled shoul- 
ders, the gasping catch of his breath, the strange 
new flicker of gray at his temples. Over and over 
to herself she kept repeating dully: “I’ve hurt 
Drew just the way that Aleck hurt me. It must n’t 
be. It must n’t be — it must n’t ! There *s got to 
be some way out ! ” 


238 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 

Then most unexpectedly, at the first street corner 
she was gathered up joyously by a crowd of her 
young married chums who were starting off in an 
automobile for their sewing-club in Ruth’s own old- 
home suburb fifteen miles away. It was a long 
time since she had played very freely with women, 
and the old associations caught her interest with a 
novel charm. Showered with candy, gay with 
questions, happy with laughter, the party whizzed 
up at last to the end of its journey, and tumbled 
out rosy with frost and mischief to join the women 
who had already arrived. From every individual 
corner of the warm, lazy sewing-room some one 
seemed to jump up and greet Ruth’s return. “ Oh, 
you pampered young bride ! ” they teased, and “ Will 
you look at the wonderful fur coat and hat that 
have happened to Ruth ! ” Even the sad-faced, wid- 
owed little dressmaker who always officiated profes- 
sionally at the club wriggled out of her seat and 
brought her small boy ’way across the room to stroke 
the girl’s sumptuous mink-brown softness. 

“Why, am I so very wonderful?” stammered 
Ruth, staring down with her hands in her pockets at 
the great fur length and breadth of her. 

“ Well, if I had a coat like that,” scoffed a shrill 
voice from the sofa, “ I should think that it was the 

most wonderful thing in life that could happen to 

_ *> 

me. 


239 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


Standing there scorching herself in the fire-glow, 
Ruth looked up suddenly with a fierce sort of in- 
tentness. “ You wise old married people,” she 
cried, “ tell me truly what really is the most won- 
derful thing in life that can happen to a woman? ” 

“ Goodness, is it a new riddle? ” shouted her hos- 
tess, and instantly a dozen noisy answers came rol- 
licking into the contest. “ Money ! ” cried the ex- 
travagant one. “ A husband who goes to the club 
every night ! ” screamed the flirt. “ Health ! ” 
“ Curls ! ” “ Dresden china ! ” “ Single blessedness ! ” 
the suggestions came piling in. Only the dress- 
maker’s haggard face whitened comprehendingly to 
the hunger underneath Ruth’s laughing eyes. Star- 
ing scornfully at the heaping luxuries all around 
her, the shabby, widow-marked woman snatched up 
her child and cuddled it to her breast. “ The most 
wonderful thing in life that can happen to a 
woman?” she quoted passionately. “ I ’ll tell you 
what it is. It ’s being able to hope that your son 
will be exactly like his father.” 

“ Exactly like his father?” The shrewd sting 
and lash of the words ripped through Ruth’s senses 
like the scorch of a red-hot fuse. Strength, ten- 
derness, patience, love, loyalty flamed up before her 
with such dazzling brilliance that she could scarcely 
fathom the features behind them, and the room 
whirled dizzily with sudden excessive heat. “ Ex- 
240 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


actly like his father.” A dozen feminine voices 
caught up the phrase and dropped it blisteringly. 
The wife of the town’s bon vivant winced a trifle. 
The most radiant bride of the year jabbed her fin- 
gers accidentally with her scissors. Some one 
started to sigh and laughed instead. A satirical 
voice suggested, “ Well, but of course there ’s got 
to be some improvement in every generation.” 

Smothering for air, Ruth reached up bunglingly 
and fastened her big fur collar and started for the 
door. “ Oh, no,” she protested to every one’s de- 
taining hands, “ honestly I did n’t intend to stay. 
I ’ve got to hurry over to the house and get some 
things before dark,” and, pleading several equally 
legitimate excuses, she bolted out into the snowy 
fields to take the quickest possible short cut to her 
Big Brother’s house. 

Every plowing step drove her heart pounding 
like an engine, and every lagging footfall started 
her scared thoughts throbbing louder than her heart. 
Hurry as fast as she could, stumbling over drift- 
hidden rocks or floundering headlong into some hol- 
low, she could not seem to outdistance the startling, 
tumultuous memory of the little dressmaker’s pas- 
sion-glorified eyes staring scornfully down on the 
slowly sobering faces of the women around her. 
The vision stung itself home to the girl like sleet 
in her eyes. 

1 6 


241 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


“O-hl” she groaned “What a wicked thing 
Life is- — wasting a man like Drew on a girl — 
like me. ‘ To be able to hope that your son will be 
exactly like his father!’” Her heart jumped. 
Merciful heavens! If Happiness were really — 
only as simple a thing as that — just to look in your 
husband’s eyes and find them good. Years and 
years hence, perhaps, she herself might have a son 
— with all his father’s blessed, winsome virtues. 
Her eyes flooded suddenly with angry tears. “ Oh, 
could Fate possibly, possibly be so tricky as to make 
a woman love her son because he was like his father, 
and yet all, all the long years make that woman just 
miss loving the father himself?” 

With a little frightened gasp she began to run. 
“If I only can get to the house,” she reasoned, 
“ then everything will be all right. And I ’ll never 
leave it again.” 

Half an hour later, panting and flushing, she 
twisted her latch-key through the familiar home 
door. No one was there to greet her. From attic 
to cellar the whole house was deserted. At ( first 
the emptiness and roominess seemed to ease and 
rest her, but after a little while she began to get lone- 
some, and started out to explore familiar corners, 
and found them unfamiliar. “ What an ugly new 
wall-paper ! ” she fretted ; “ and what a silly way to 
set the table ! ” Her old room smote upon her with 
242 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


strange surprise — not cunningly, like one’s funny 
little baby clothes, but distastefully, like a last year’s 
outgrown coat. In the large, light pantry a fresh 
disappointment greeted her. “ What an insipid 
salad ! ” she mourned. “ It is n’t half as nice as 
the salad Drew makes.” Cookies, cakes, dough- 
nuts failed her successively. “ And I used to think 
they were the best I ever tasted,” she puzzled. In 
the newly upholstered parlor a queer unrest sick- 
ened her. “ Why, the house does n’t seem quite to 
— fit me any more,” she acknowledged, and bun- 
dled herself into her coat again, and stuffed her 
pockets with apples, and started off more gladly for 
the barn. 

As she pushed back the heavy sliding doors a 
horse whinnied, possibly for welcome, but probably 
for oats. Teased by the uncertainty, the girl threw 
back her head and laughed. “ Hello, all you ani- 
mals,” she cried ; “ I have come home. Is n’t it 
fine?” 

Up from the floor of his pen the lamb rose clat- 
teringly like a mechanical toy, and met the glad 
news with a peculiarly disdainful “ B-a-a-a ! ” 
Back to the sheltering wood-pile her old friends 
the kittens — little cats now — fled from her with 
precipitous fear. The white-nosed cow reared back 
with staring eyes. The pet horse snapped at her 
fingers instead of the apple. The collie dog, to be 
243 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


sure, came jumping boisterously, but the jumpiness 
was unmistakably because he was “ Carlo,” and not 
because she was “ Ruth.” And yet only six months 
before every animal on the place had looked like 
her with that strange, absurd mimicry of human ex- 
pression that characterizes the faces of all much- 
cherished birds or beasties. And now even the col- 
lie dog had reverted to the plain, blank-featured 
canine street type — and the pet horse looked like 
the hired man. 

The girl’s forehead puckered up into a bewildered 
sort of frown. “ I don’t quite seem to belong any- 
where,” she concluded. The thought was unpleas- 
ant. Worst of all, the increasing, utterly unexplain- 
able sob in her throat made her feel very reluctant 
to go back into the house and wait for her Brother 
and the Housekeeper and the inevitable questions. 
Dallying there on the edge of the wheelbarrow, 
munching her red-cheeked apples, it was almost eight 
o’clock before her mind quickened to a solution of 
her immediate difficulties. She would hide in the 
hay all night, there in the sweetness and softness 
of last summer’s beautiful grass, and think out her 
problems and decide what to do. 

Deep in the hay she burrowed out a nest, and 
lined it with the biggest buffalo robe and the thick- 
est carriage rug. Then one by one she carried up 
the astonished kittens, and the heavy, fat lamb, and 
244 



“ Hello, all you animals,” she cried 








THE AMATEUR LOVER 


the scrambling collie dog to keep her company, and 
snuggled herself down, warm and content, to drowse 
and dream amidst the musty cobwebs, and the short, 
sharp snap of straws, and the soothing sighs of the 
sleepy cow, and the stamp, stamp of the horse, and 
all the extra, indefinite, scary, lonesome night noises 
that keep your nerves exploding intermittently like 
torpedoes and start your common sense scouring 
like a silver polish at all the tarnished values of your 
everyday life. 

Midnight found her lying wide awake and starry- 
eyed, with her red lips twisted into an oddly in- 
scrutable smile. Close in her left hand the collie 
dog nestled his grizzly nose. Under her right arm 
the woolly lamb slumbered. Over her quiet feet the 
little cats purred with fire-gleaming faces. 

Attracted by the barking of his new bulldog, Big 
Brother came out in the early morning and discov- 
ered her in the hay. 

“ Well, for heaven’s sake ! ” he began. “ Where 
did you come from? Where does Drew think you 
are ? He ’s been telephoning here all night trying 
to find you. I guess he ’s scared to death. Great 
Scott! what’s the matter? What are you hiding 
out here for? Have you had any trouble with 
Drew? ” 

She slid down out of her nest with the jolliest 
sort of a laugh. “Of course I have n’t had any 
245 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


trouble with Drew. I just wanted to come home. 
That’s all Drew buys me everything else,” she 
dimpled, “ but he simply won’t buy me any hay — 
and I ’m such a donkey.” 

Big Brother shrugged his shoulders. “ You ’re 
just as foolish as ever,” he began, and then finished 
abruptly with “ What a perfectly absurd way to do 
your hair! It looks like fury.” 

An angry flush rose to her cheeks, and she reached 
up her hands defensively. “ It suits Drew all 
right,” she retorted. 

Big Brother laughed. “ Well, come along in the 
house and get your breakfast and telephone Drew.” 

The funniest sort of an impulse smote suddenly 
upon Ruth’s mind. “ I don’t want any breakfast,” 
she protested, “ and I don’t want any telephone. 
I ’m going home this minute to surprise Drew. 
We were going to have broiled chicken, and a new 
dining-room table, and a pot of primroses as big as 
your head. Shall I have time to wash my face be- 
fore the car comes ? ” 

Ten minutes after that she was running like mad 
to the main street. An hour later the big, whizzing 
electric car that was speeding her back to the city 
crashed headlong at a curve into another brittling, 
splintering mass of screams and blood and broken 
glass and shivering woodwork. 

When she came to her senses she was lying in her 
246 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


blood-stained furs on some one’s piazza floor, and 
the horrid news of the accident must have traveled 
very quickly, for a great crowd of people was 
trampling round over the snowy lawn, and Big 
Brother and Aleck Reese and the old family doctor 
seemed to have dropped down right out of the snow- 
whirling sky. Just as she opened her eyes, Aleck 
Reese, haggard with fear and dissipation, was 
kneeling down trying to slip his arms under her. 

With the mightiest possible effort she lifted her 
forefinger warningly. 

“ Don’t you dare touch me,” she threatened. “ I 
promised Drew — ” 

The doctor looked up astonished into her wide- 
open eyes. “ Now, Ruth,” he begged, “ don’t you 
make any fuss. We ’ve got to get you into a car- 
riage. We ’ll try not to hurt you any more than is 
absolutely necessary.” 

Her shattered nerves failed her utterly. “ What 
nonsense! ” she sobbed. “ You don’t have to hurt 
me at all. My own man never hurts me at all. I 
tell you I want my own man.” 

“ But we can’t find Drew,” protested the doctor. 

Then the blood came gushing back into her eyes 
and some wicked brute took her bruised knees, and 
her wrenched back, and her broken collar bone, and 
her smashed head, and jarred them all up together 
like a bag of junk, and she gave one awful, blood- 
247 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


curdling yell — and a horse whinnied — and every- 
thing in the world stopped happening like a run- 
down clock. 

When Time began to tick normally again, she 
found herself lying with an almost solid cotton face 
in a pleasant, puffy bed that seemed to rock, and 
roll, and tug against her straining arm that clutched 
its fingers like an anchor into somebody’s perfectly 
firm, kind hand. As far away as a voice on a 
shore, tired, hoarse, desperately incessant, some one 
was signaling reassurance to her : “ You ’re all 

right, honey, You ’re all right, honey.” 

After a long time her fingers twittered in the 
warm grasp. “ Who are you ? ” she stammered 
perplexedly. 

“ Just your ‘ own man/ ” whispered Drew. 

The lips struggling out from the edge of the 
bandage quivered a little. “ My ‘ own man ’ ? ” she 
repeated with surprise. “ Who was the tattletale 
that told you ? ” She began to shiver suddenly 
in mental or physical agony. “ Oh, I remember it 
all now,” she gasped. “ Was the little boy killed 
who sat in the corner seat?” 

“ Why, I don’t know,” said Drew, and his voice 
rasped unexpectedly with the sickening strain of 
the past few hours. 

At the sound she gave a panic-stricken sob. “ I 
248 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 

believe I ’m dead myself, Drew,” she cried, “ and 
you ’re trying to keep it from me. Where am I ? 
Tell me instantly where I am.” 

Drew’s laugh rang out before he could control 
it. “ You ’re here in your own little room,” he as- 
sured her. 

“ Prove it,” she whimpered hysterically. “Tell 
me what ’s on my bureau.” 

He jumped up and walked across the room to 
make sure. “ Why, there ’s a silver-backed mirror, 
and a box of violet powder, and a package of safety 
pins.” 

“ Pshaw ! ” she said. “ Those might be on any 
angel’s bureau. What else do you see?” 

He fumbled a minute among the glass and silver 
and gave a quick sigh of surprise. “ Here ’s your 
wedding ring.” 

“ Bring it to me,” she pleaded, and took the tiny 
golden circlet blindly from his hand and slipped it 
experimentally once or twice up and down her fin- 
ger. “ Yes, that ’s it,” she assented, and handed it 
back to him. “Hurry — quick — before anybody 
comes.” 

“ What do you want ? ” faltered Drew. 

She reached up wilfully and yanked the bandage 
away from the corner of one eye. 

“Why, put the ring back on my finger where 
249 


THE AMATEUR LOVER 


it belongs ! ” she said. “ We ’re going to begin all 
over again. Play that I am your wife ! ” she de- 
manded tremulously. 

Drew winced like raw flesh. “ You are my 
wife,” he cried. “ You are! You are! You 
are!” 

With all the strength that was left to her she 
groped out and drew his face down to her lips. 

“ Oh, I ’ve invented a lots better game than that,” 
she whispered. “If we ’re going to play any game 
at all — let ’s — play — that — I — love — you ! ” 


250 







* 




HEART OF THE CITY 


ft 







HEART OF THE CITY 


HE dining-room was green, as 
green could be. Under the or- 
ange-colored candle-light, the 
walls, rugs, ceiling, draperies, 
ferns, glowed verdant, mysterious, 
intense, like night woods arch- 
ing round a camp fire. Into this fervid, pastoral 
verdure the round white table, sparkling with silver, 
limpid with wine-lights, seemed to roll forth re- 
splendent and incongruous as a huge, tinseled snow- 
ball. 

Outside, like fire engines running on velvet 
wheels, the automobiles went humming along the 
pavement. Inside, the soft, narrow, ribbony voice 
of a violin came whimpering through the rose- 
scented air. 

It was the midst of dinner-party time. In the 
oak-paneled hallway a shadowy, tall clock swallowed 
gutturally on the verge of striking nine. 

The moment was distinctly nervous. The entree 
course was late, and the Hostess, gesticulating 
tragically to her husband, had slipped one chalky 
253 



HEART OF THE CITY 

white shoulder just a fraction of an inch too far 
out of its jeweled strap. The Host, conversing 
every second with exaggerated blandness about the 
squirrels in Central Park, was striving frantically 
all the while with a desperately surreptitious, itchy 
gesture to signal to his mate. Worse than this, 
a prominent Sociologist was audibly discussing the 
American penal system with a worried-looking lady 
whose brother was even then under indictment for 
some banking fraud. Some one, trying to kick the 
Sociologist’s ankle bone, had snagged his own foot 
gashingly through the Woodland Girl’s skirt ruffle, 
and the Woodland Girl, blush-blown yet with coun- 
try breezes, clear-eyed as a trout pool, sweet- 
breathed as balsam, was staring panic-stricken 
around the table, trying to locate the particular 
man’s face that could possibly connect boot-wise 
with such a horridly profane accident. The sud- 
den, grotesque alertness of her expression attracted 
the laggard interest of the young Journalist at her 
left. 

“What brought you to New York?” the Jour- 
nalist asked abruptly. “ You ’re the last victim 
in from the country, so you must give an account 
of yourself. Come ’fess up! What brought you 
to New York? ” 

The Journalist’s smile was at least as conscien- 
tious as the smile of daylight down a city airshaft, 
254 


HEART OF THE CITY 


and the Woodland Girl quickened to the brighten- 
ing with almost melodramatic delight, for all pre- 
vious conversational overtures from this neighbor 
had been about actors that she had never heard of, 
or operas that she could not even pronounce, and 
before the man’s scrutinizing, puzzled amazement 
she had felt convicted not alone of mere rural ig- 
norance, but of freckles on her nose. 

“ What brought me to New York?” she re- 
peated with vehement new courage. “ Do you 
really want to know ? It ’s quite a speech. What 
brought me to New York? Why, I wanted to see 
the * heart of the city.’ I ’m twenty years old, and 
I ’ve never in all my life been away from home be- 
fore. Always and always I ’ve lived in a log bung- 
alow, in a wild garden, in a pine forest, on a green 
island, in a blue lake. My father is an invalid, 
you know, one of those people who are a little 
bit short of lungs but inordinately long of brains. 
And I know Anglo-Saxon and Chemistry and Hin- 
doo History and Sunrises and Sunsets and Moun- 
tains and Moose, and such things. But I wanted 
to know People. I wanted to know Romance. I 
wanted to see for myself all this 4 heart of the 
city ’ that you hear so much about — the great, 
blood-red, eager, gasping heart of the city. So I 
came down here last week to visit my uncle and 
aunt.” 


253 


HEART OF THE CITY 


Her mouth tightened suddenly, and she lowered 
her voice with ominous intensity. “ But there is n't 
any heart to, your city — no! — there is no heart 
at all at the center of things — just a silly, pretty, 
very much decorated heart-shaped box filled with 
candy. If you shake it hard enough, it may rattle, 
but it won’t throb. And I hate — hate — hate 
your old city. It ’s utterly, hopelessly, irremedia- 
bly jejune, and I ’m going home to-morrow! ” As 
she leaned toward the Journalist, the gold locket 
on her prim, high-necked gown swung precipitously 
forth like a wall picture in a furious little earth- 
quake. 

The Journalist started to laugh, then changed 
his mind and narrowed his eyes speculatively to- 
ward something across the room. “ No heart?” 
he queried. “ No Romance ? ” 

The Woodland Girl followed his exploring gaze. 
Between the plushy green portieres a dull, cool, 
rose-colored vista opened forth refreshingly, with 
a fragment of bookcase, the edge of a stained 
glass window, the polished gleam of a grand piano, 
and then — lithe, sinuous, willowy, in the shaded 
lamplight — the lone, accentuated figure of a boy 
violinist. In the amazing mellow glow that smote 
upon his face, the Woodland Girl noted with a 
crumple at her heart the tragic droop of the boy’s 
dark head, the sluggish, velvet passion of his eyes, 
256 











HEART OF THE CITY 


the tortured mouth, the small chin fairly worn and 
burrowed away against his vibrant instrument. 
And the music that burst suddenly forth was like 
scalding water poured on ice — seething with an- 
guish, shuddering with ecstasy, flame at your heart, 
frost at your spine. 

The Girl began to shiver. “ Oh, yes, I know/’ 
she whispered. “ He plays, of course, as though 
he knew all sorrows by their first names, but that ’s 
Genius, is n’t it, not Romance ? He ’s such a little 
lad. He can hardly have experienced much really 
truly emotion as yet beyond a — stomach ache — 
or the loss of a Henty book.” 

“ A stomach ache ! A Henty book ! ” cried the 
Journalist, with a bitter, convulsive sort of mirth. 
“ Well, I ’m ready to admit that the boy is scarcely 
eighteen. But he happens to have lost a wife and 
a son within the past two months! While some 
of us country-born fellows of twenty-eight or thirty 
were asking our patient girls at home to wait even 
another year, while we came over to New York 
and tried our fortunes, this little youngster of 
scarcely eighteen is already a husband, a father, and 
a widower. 

“He’s a Russian Jew — you can see that — 
and one of our big music people picked him up 
over there a few months ago and brought him 
jabberingly to America. But the invitation did n’t 
17 ' 2 57 


HEART OF THE CITY 


seem to include the wife and baby — genius and 
family life aren’t exactly guaranteed to develop 
very successfully together — and right there on 
the dock at the very last sailing moment the little 
chap had to choose between a small, wailing family 
and a great big, clapping New York — just tem- 
porarily, you understand, a mere matter of im- 
mediate expediency; and families are supposed to 
keep indefinitely, you know, and keep sweet, too, 
while everybody knows that New York can go 
sour in a single night, even in the coldest weather. 
And just as the youngster was trying to decide, 
wavering first one way and then the other, and 
calling on high every moment to the God of all the 
Russias, the old steamer whistle began to blow, 
and they rustled him on board, and his wife and 
the kid pegged back alone to the province where 
the girl’s father lived, and they got snarled up on 
the way with a band of Cossack soldiers, and the 
little chap has n’t got any one now even as far off 
as Russia to hamper his musical career. . . . 

So he’s playing jig-tunes to people like us that 
are trying to forget our own troubles, such as how 
much we owe our tailors or our milliners. But 
sometimes they say he screams in the night, and 
twice he has fainted in the midst of a concert. 

“No heart in the city? No Romance? Why, 
my dear child, this whole city fairly teems with 
258 


HEART OF THE CITY 


Romance. The automobiles throb with it. The 
great, roaring elevated trains go hustling full of it. 
There ’s Romance — Romance — Romance from 
dawn to dark, and from dark to dawn again. The 
sweetness of the day-blooming sunshine, the mad- 
ness of the night-blooming electric lights, the 
crowds, the colors, the music, the perfume — why, 
the city is Romance-mad! If you stop anywhere 
for even half an instant to get your breath, Ro- 
mance will run right over you. It ’s whizzing past 
you in the air. It ’s whizzing past you in the street. 
It ’s whizzing past you in the sensuous, ornate the- 
aters, in the jaded department stores, in the calm, 
gray churches. Romance ? — Love ? 

“ The only trouble about New York Romance 
lies just in the fact that it is so whizzingly prema- 
ture. You ’ve simply got to grab Love the minute 
before you ’ve made up your mind — because the 
minute after you Ve made up your mind, it won’t 
be there. Grab it — or lose it. Grab it — or lose 
it. That ’s the whole Heart-Motto of New York. 
Sinner or Saint — rush — rush — rush — like 
Hell! ” 

“ Grab it — or lose it. Grab it, or — 1-o-s-e it.” 
Like the impish raillery of a tortured devil, the vio- 
lin’s passionate, wheedling tremolo seemed to catch 
up the phrase, and mouth it and mock it, and tear 
it and tease it, and kiss it and curse it — and 
259 


HEART OF THE CITY 


smash it at last into a great, screeching crescendo 
that rent your eardrums like the crash of steel 
rails. 

With strangely parched lips, the Woodland Girl 
stretched out her small brown hand to the fragile, 
flower-stemmed glass, and tasted for the first time 
in her life the sweety-sad, molten-gold magic of 
champagne. “ Why, what is it ? ” she asked, with 
the wonder still wet on her lips. “ Why, what 
is it?” 

The Journalist raised his own glass with staler 
fingers, and stared for a second through narrow- 
ing eyes into the shimmering vintage. “ What is 
it?” he repeated softly. “This particular brand? 
The Italians call it ‘ Lcicrymce Christi ! So even 
in our furies and our follies, in our cafes and ca- 
rousals, in our love and all our laughter — we drink 
— you see — the — ‘ Tears of Christ.’ ” He 
reached out suddenly and covered the Girl’s half- 
drained glass with a quivering hand. “ Excuse 
me,” he stammered. “ Maybe — our thirst is 
partly of the soul ; but ' Lacrymce Christi ’ was 
never meant for little girls like you. Go back to 
your woods! ” 

Scuttle as it might, the precipitate, naked passion 
in his voice did not quite have time to cover itself 
with word-clothes. A little gasping breath es- 
caped. And though the Girl’s young life was as 
260 


HEART OF THE CITY 


shiningly empty as an unfinished house, her brain- 
cells were packed like an attic with all the inherent 
experiences of her mother’s mother’s mother, and 
she flinched instinctively with a great lurch of her 
heart. 

“Oh, let’s talk about something — dressy,” she 
begged. “ Let ’s talk about Central Park. Let ’s 
talk about the shops. Let ’s talk about the sub- 
way.” Her startled face broke desperately into 
a smile. “ Oh, don’t you think the subway is per- 
fectly dreadful,” she insisted. “ There ’s so much 
underbrush in it ! ” Even as she spoke, her shoul- 
ders hunched up the merest trifle, and her head 
pushed forward, after the manner of people who 
walk much in the deep woods. The perplexity in 
her eyes spread instantly to her hands. Among the 
confusing array of knives and forks and spoons 
at her plate, her fingers began to snarl nervously 
like a city man’s feet through a tangle of black- 
berry vines. 

With a good-natured shrug of his shoulders, the 
Journalist turned to his more sophisticated neigh- 
bor, and left her quite piteously alone once more. 
An enamored-looking man and woman at her right 
were talking transmigration of souls, but whenever 
she tried to annex herself to their conversation 
they trailed their voices away from her in a sacred, 
aloof sort of whisper. Across the table the people 
261 


HEART OF THE CITY 


were discussing city politics in a most clandestine 
sort of an undertone. Altogether it was almost 
half an hour before the Journalist remembered to 
smile at her again. The very first flicker of his 
lips started her red mouth mumbling inarticulately. 

“ Were you going to say something? ” he asked. 

She shook her head drearily. “ No,” she stam- 
mered. “ I ’ve tried and tried, but I can’t think 
of anything at all to say. I guess I don’t know any 
secrets.” 

The Journalist’s keen eyes traveled shrewdly for 
a second round the cautious, worldly-wise table, 
and then came narrowing back rather quizzically 
to the Woodland Girl’s flushing, pink and white 
face. 

“ Oh, I don’t know,” he smiled. “ You look to 
me like a little girl who might have a good many 
secrets.” 

She shook her head. “ No,” she insisted, “ in 
all the whole wide world I don’t know one single 
thing that has to be whispered.” 

“No scandals?” teased the Journalist. 

“ No!” 

“ No love affairs? ” 

“ No!” 

The Journalist laughed. “ Why, what do you 
think about all day long up in your woods ? ” he 
quizzed. 


262 


HEART OF THE CITY 


“ Anglo-Saxon and Chemistry and Hindoo His- 
tory and Sunsets and Mountains and Moose/' she 
repeated glibly. 

“ Now you ’re teasing me,” said the Journalist. 

She nodded her head delightedly. “ I ’m trying 
to ! ” she smiled. 

The Journalist turned part way round in his 
chair, and proffered her a perfectly huge olive as 
though it had been a crown jewel. When he spoke 
again, his voice was almost as low as the voice of 
the man who was talking transmigration of souls. 
But his smile was a great deal kinder. “ Don’t 
you find any Romance at all in your woods ? ” he 
asked a bit drawlingly. 

“ No,” said the Girl; “ that ’s the trouble. Of 
course, when I was small it did n’t make any dif- 
ference; indeed, I think that I rather preferred it 
lonesome then. But this last year, somehow, and 
this last autumn especially — oh, I know you ’ll 
think I ’m silly — but two or three times in the 
woods — I ’ve hoped and hoped and hoped — at 
the turn of a trail, or the edge of a brook, or the 
scent of a camp fire — that I might run right into 
a real, live Hunter or Fisherman. And — one 
night I really prayed about it — and the next morn- 
ing I got up early and put on my very best little 
hunting suit — all coats and leggings and things 
just like yours, you know — and I stayed out all 
263 


HEART OF THE CITY 


delphia boy who tutors with my father in the sum- 
mers.” 

Her youthfulness was almost as frank as fever, 
and, though taking advantage of this frankness 
seemed quite as reprehensible as taking advantage of 
any other kind of babbling delirium, the Journalist 
felt somehow obliged to pursue his investigations. 

“ Nice boy?” he suggested tactfully. 

The Girl’s nose crinkled just a little bit tighter. 

The Journalist frowned. “ I ’ll wager you two 
dozen squirrels out of Central Park,” he said, “ that 
Peter is head over heels in love with you ! ” 

The Girl’s mouth twisted a trifle, but her eyes 
were absolutely solemn. “ I suppose that he is,” 
she answered gravely, “ but he ’s never taken the 
trouble to tell me so, and he ’s been with us three 
summers. I suppose lots of men are made like 
that. You read about it in books. They want to 
sew just as long — long — long a seam as they 
possibly can without tying any knot in the thread. 
Peter, I know, wants to make perfectly Philadel- 
phia-sure that he won’t meet any girl in the winters 
whom he likes better.” 

“ I think that sort of thing is mighty mean,” in- 
terposed the Journalist sympathetically. 

“Mean?” cried the Girl. “Mean?” Her 
tousley yellow hair seemed fairly electrified with as- 
tonishment, and her big blue eyes brimmed suddenly 
266 


HEART OF THE CITY 


with uproarious delight. “ Oh, of course,” she 
added contritely, “ it may be mean for the person 
who sews the seam, but it ’s heaps of fun for the 
cloth, because after awhile, you know, Pompous 
Peter will discover that there is n’t any winter girl 
whom he likes better, and in the general excitement 
of the discovery he ’ll remember only the long, long 
seam — three happy summers — and forget alto- 
gether that he never tied any knot. And then! 
And then ! ” her cheeks began to dimple. “ And 
then — just as he begins triumphantly to gather me 
in — all my yards and yards and yards of beauti- 
ful freedom fretted into one short, puckery, wor- 
ried ruffle — then — Hooray — swish — slip — 
slide — out comes the thread — and Mr. Peter falls 
right over bump-backward with surprise. Won’t 
it be fun?” 

'' Fun? ” snapped the Journalist. “ What a hor- 
rid, heartless little cynic you are ! ” 

The Girl’s eyebrows fairly tiptoed to reach his 
meaning. “ Cynic? ” she questioned. " You surely 
don’t mean that I am a cynic? Why, I think men 
are perfectly splendid in every possible way that 
— does n’t matter to a woman. They can build 
bridges and wage wars, and spell the hardest, home- 
liest words. But Peter makes life so puzzling,” 
she added wryly. “ Everybody wants me to marry 
Peter; everybody says 'slow but sure/ 'slow but 
267 


HEART OF THE CITY 


sure/ But it ’s a lie ! ” she cried out hotly. “ Slow 
is not sure. It is not! It is not! The man who 
is n’t excited enough to run to his goal is hardly 
interested enough to walk. And yet ” — her fore- 
head crinkled all up with worry — “ and yet — you 
tell me that ‘ quick ’ is n’t sure, either. What is 
sure ? ” 

“ Nothing! ” said the Journalist. 

She tossed her head. “ All the same,” she re- 
torted, “ I ’d rather have a man propose to me 
three years before, rather than three years after, 
I ’d made up my mind whether to accept him or 
not.” 

“ Don’t — marry — Peter,” laughed the Jour- 
nalist. 

“Why not?” she asked — so very bluntly that 
the Journalist twisted a bit uneasily. 

“ Oh — I — don’t — know,” he answered cau- 
tiously. Then suddenly his face brightened. 
“ Any trout fishing up in your brooks about the 
first of May?” he asked covertly. 

Again the knowledge of her mother’s mother’s 
mother blazed red-hot in the Girl’s cheeks. 
“ Y — e — s,” she faltered reluctantly, “ the trout- 
fishing is very generous in May.” 

“Will Peter be there?” persisted the Journalist. 

Her eyes began to shine again with amusement. 
[t Oh, no,” she said. “ Peter never comes until 
268 


HEART OF THE CITY 


July.” With mock dignity she straightened her- 
self up till her shoulder almost reached the Jour- 
nalist’s. “ I was very foolish,” she attested, “ even 
to mention Peter, or mankind — at all. Of course, 
I ’m commencing to realize that my ideas about 
men are exceedingly countrified — ‘ disgustingly 
countrified,’ my aunt tells me. Why, just this last 
week at my aunt’s sewing club I learned that the 
only two real qualifications for marriage are that a 
man should earn not less than a hundred dollars a 
week, and be a perfectly kind hooker.” 

“ A perfectly kind hooker?” queried the Jour- 
nalist. 

“ Why, yes,” she said. “ Don’t you know — 
now — that all our dresses fasten in the back ? ” 
Her little tinkling, giggling laugh rang out with 
startling incongruity through the formal room, and 
her uncle glanced at her and frowned with the 
slightest perceptible flicker of irritation. She 
leaned her face a wee bit closer to the Journalist. 
“ Now, uncle, for instance,” she confided, “ is not 
a particularly kind hooker. He ’s accurate, you 
understand, but not exactly kind.” 

The Journalist started to smile, but instantly 
her tip-most finger ends brushed across his sleeve. 
“ Oh, please, don’t smile any more,” she pleaded, 
“ because every time you smile you look so pleas- 
ant that some lady sticks out a remark like a hand 
269 


HEART OF THE CITY 


and grabs you into her own conversation.” But 
the warning came too late. In another moment 
the Journalist was most horridly involved with the 
people on his left in a prosy discussion regarding 
Japanese servants. 

For another interminable length of time the 
Woodland Girl sat in absolute isolation. Some of 
the funerals at home were vastly more social, she 
thought — people at least inquired after the health 
of the survivors. But now, even after she had 
shredded all her lettuce into a hundred pieces and 
bitten each piece twice, she was still quite alone. 
Even after she had surreptitiously nibbled up all 
the cracker crumbs around her own plate and the 
Journalist’s plate, she was still quite alone. Fi- 
nally, in complete despair, she folded her little, 
brown, ringless hands and sat and stared frankly 
about her. 

Across the sparkly, rose-reeking table a man as 
polished as poison ivy was talking devotedly to a 
white-faced Beauty in a most exciting gown that 
looked for all the world like the Garden of Eden 
struck by lightning — black and billowing as a 
thunder cloud, zigzagged with silver, ravished with 
rose-petals, rain-dropped with pearls. Out of the 
gorgeous, 'mysterious confusion of it the Beauty’s 
bare shoulders leaped away like Eve herself fleeing 
before the storm. But beyond the extravagant 
270 


HEART OF THE CITY 


sweep of gown and shoulder the primitive likeness 
ended abruptly in one of those utterly well-bred, 
worldly-wise, perfected young faces, with that sub- 
tle, indescribable sex-consciousness of expression 
which makes the type that men go mad over, and 
the type that older women tersely designate as look- 
ing just a little bit “ too kissed.” 

But the Woodland Girl did not know the 
crumpled-rose-leaf stamp of face which character- 
izes the coquette. Utterly fascinated, tremulous 
with excitement, heartsick with envy, she reached 
out very softly and knocked with her finger on the 
Journalist’s plate to beg readmission to his mind. 

“ Oh, who is that beautiful creature? ” she whis- 
pered. 

“ Adele Reitzen,” said the Journalist, “your 
uncle’s ward.” 

“My own uncle’s ward?” The Woodland Girl 
gave a little gasp. “ But why does she worry so 
in her eyes every now and then?” she asked 
abruptly. 

Even as she asked, Adele Reitzen began to cough. 
The trouble started with a trivial clearing of her 
throat, caught up a disjointed swallow or two, and 
ended with a rack that seemed to rip like a brutal 
knife right across her silver-spangled lungs. Some- 
body patted her on the back. Somebody offered 
her a glass of water. But in the midst of the chok- 
271 


HEART OF THE CITY 


ing paroxysm she asked to be excused for a mo- 
ment and slipped away to the dressing-room. The 
very devoted man seemed rather piteously worried 
by the incident, and the Hostess looked straight 
into his eyes and shook her head ominously. 

“ I hope you are planning a southern wedding trip 
next week,” she said. “ I don’t like that cough 
of Adele’s. I ’ve sat at three dinner parties with 
her this week, and each individual night she has 
had an attack like this and been obliged to leave the 
table.” 

In the moment’s lull, the butler presented a yel- 
low telegram on a shiny, Sheffield tray, and the 
Hostess slipped her pink fingers rustlingly through 
the envelope and brightened instantly. “ Oh, 
here ’s a surprise for you, Chloe,” she called to the 
Woodland Girl. “ Peter is coming over to-night 
to see you.” Like a puckering electric tingle the 
simple announcement seemed to run through the 
room, and a little wise, mischievous smile spread 
from face to face among the guests. In another 
instant everybody turned and peeped at the Wood- 
land Girl, and the Woodland Girl felt her good 
cool, red blood turn suddenly to bubbling, boiling- 
water, and steam in horrid, clammy wetness across 
her forehead and along the prickling palms of her 
hands, and the Journalist laughed right out loud, 
and the whole green, definite room swam dizzily 
272 


HEART OF THE CITY 

like the flaunting scarlet messiness of a tropical 
jungle. 

Every nook and corner of the house, indeed, was 
luxuriously heated, but when Adele Reitzen came 
sauntering back to her seat, pungent around her, 
telltale as an alien perfume, lurked the chill, fresh 
aroma of the wintry, blustering street. Only the 
country girl’s smothering lungs noted the astonish- 
ing fact. Like a little caged animal scenting the 
blessed outdoors, her nostrils began to crinkle, and 
she straightened up with such abrupt alertness that 
she loomed to Adele Reitzen’s startled senses like 
the only visible person at the table, and for just 
the fraction of a heart-beat the two girls fathomed 
down deep and understanding^ into each other’s 
eyes, before Adele Reitzen fluttered her white 
lids with a little piteous gesture of appeal. 

Breathlessly the Woodland Girl turned to the 
Journalist, and touched his arm. “ New York is 
interesting, is n’t it ! ” she stammered. “ I ’ve de- 
cided just this minute to stay another week.” 

“ Oh, ho,” said the Journalist. “ So you love it 
better than you did an hour ago ? ” 

“ No ! ” cried the Woodland Girl. “ I love it 
worse. I love it worse every moment like a — 
ghost story, but I ’m going to stick it out a week 
longer and see how it ends. And I ’ve learned one 
clue to New York’s plot this very night. I Ve 


HEART OF THE CITY 


ing paroxysm she asked to be excused for a mo- 
ment and slipped away to the dressing-room. The 
very devoted man seemed rather piteously worried 
by the incident, and the Hostess looked straight 
into his eyes and shook her head ominously. 

“ I hope you are planning a southern wedding trip 
next week/’ she said. “ I don’t like that cough 
of Adele’s. I ’ve sat at three dinner parties with 
her this week, and each individual night she has 
had an attack like this and been obliged to leave the 
table.” 

In the moment’s lull, the butler presented a yel- 
low telegram on a shiny, Sheffield tray, and the 
Hostess slipped her pink fingers rustlingly through 
the envelope and brightened instantly. “ Oh, 
here ’s a surprise for you, Chloe,” she called to the 
Woodland Girl. “ Peter is coming over to-night 
to see you.” Like a puckering electric tingle the 
simple announcement seemed to run through the 
room, and a little wise, mischievous smile spread 
from face to face among the guests. In another 
instant everybody turned and peeped at the Wood- 
land Girl, and the Woodland Girl felt her good 
cool, red blood turn suddenly to bubbling, boiling- 
water, and steam in horrid, clammy wetness across 
her forehead and along the prickling palms of her 
hands, and the Journalist laughed right out loud, 
and the whole green, definite room swam dizzily 
272 


HEART OF THE CITY 


like the flaunting scarlet messiness of a tropical 
jungle. 

Every nook and corner of the house, indeed, was 
luxuriously heated, but when Adele Reitzen came 
sauntering back to her seat, pungent around her, 
telltale as an alien perfume, lurked the chill, fresh 
aroma of the wintry, blustering street. Only the 
country girl’s smothering lungs noted the astonish- 
ing fact. Like a little caged animal scenting the 
blessed outdoors, her nostrils began to crinkle, and 
she straightened up with such abrupt alertness that 
she loomed to Adele Reitzen’s startled senses like 
the only visible person at the table, and for just 
the fraction of a heart-beat the two girls fathomed 
down deep and understanding^ into each other’s 
eyes, before Adele Reitzen fluttered her white 
lids with a little piteous gesture of appeal. 

Breathlessly the Woodland Girl turned to the 
Journalist, and touched his arm. “ New York is 
interesting, is n’t it ! ” she stammered. “ I ’ve de- 
cided just this minute to stay another week.” 

“ Oh, ho,” said the Journalist. “ So you love it 
better than you did an hour ago? ” 

“ No ! ” cried the Woodland Girl. “ I love it 
worse. I love it worse every moment like a — 
ghost story, but I ’m going to stick it out a week 
longer and see how it ends. And I ’ve learned one 
clue to New York’s plot this very night. I ’ve 


HEART OF THE CITY 


learned that most every face is a ‘ haunted house.’ 
The mouths slam back and forth all the time like 
pleasant doors, and the j oiliest kind of speeches 
come prancing out, and all that — but in the eyes 
ghosts are peering out the windows every minute.” 

“ Cheerful thought,” said the Journalist, taking 
off his glasses. “ Who ’s the ghost in my eyes?” 

The Woodland Girl stared at him wonderingly. 
“ The ghost in your eyes? ” she blundered. “ Why 
— I guess — it ’s ‘ the patient girl at home ’ whom 
you asked to wait ‘ even another year.’ ” 

Like two fever spots the red flared angrily on the 
Journalist’s cheek bones. 

Not even the Journalist spoke to her again. 

Finally, lonesome as a naughty child, she fol- 
lowed the dozen dinner guests back into the huge 
drawing-room, and wandered aimlessly around 
through the incomprehensible mysteries of Chinese 
idols and teakwood tabourets and soft, mushy 
Asiatic rugs. Then at last, behind a dark, jutting 
bookcase, in a corner most blissfully safe and secret 
like a cave, she stumbled suddenly upon a great, 
mottled leopard skin with its big, humpy head, and 
its sad glass eyes yearning out to her reproachfully. 
As though it had been a tiny, lost kitten, she gave 
a wee gasp of joy, and dropped down on the floor 
and tried to cuddle the huge, felt-lined, fur bulk 
into her lap. Just as the clumsy face flopped across 
274 


HEART OF THE CITY 


her knees, she heard the quick swish of silk, and 
looked up to see Adele Reitzen bending over her. 

The older girl’s eyes were tortured with worry, 
and her white fingers teased perpetually at the jew- 
eled watch on her breast. “ Chloe Curtis,” she 
whispered abruptly, “ will you do something for 
me? Would you be afraid? You are visiting here 
in the house, so no one would question your disap- 
pearance. Will you go up to the dressing-room — 
quick — and get my black evening coat — the one 
with the gold embroidery and the big hood — and 
go out to the street corner where the cars stop — 
and tell the man who is waiting there — that I 
could n’t — simply could n’t — get out again ? 
Would you be afraid? ” 

The Woodland Girl jumped to her feet. At that 
particular instant the lump in her throat seemed the 
only really insurmountable obstacle in the whole 
wide world. “ Would I be afraid?” she scoffed. 
“Afraid of what? Of New York? Of the elec- 
tric lights? Of the automobiles? Of the cross po- 
licemen? Afraid of nothing! ” Her voice lowered 
suddenly. “ Is it — Love ? ” she whispered. 

The older girl’s face was piteous to see. 
“ Y — e — s,” she stammered. “ It is Love.” 

The Woodland Girl’s eyes grew big with wonder. 
“But the other man?” she gasped. “You are 
going to be married next week ! ” 

275 


HEART OF THE CITY 


Adele Reitzen’s eyes blurred. “ Yes,” she re- 
peated, “ I am going to be married next week.” A 
little shiver went flickering across her shoulders. 

The Woodland Girl’s heart began to plunge and 
race. “ What ’s the matter with the man out on 
the street corner ? ” she asked nervously. 

Adele Reitzen caught her breath. “ He ’s a civil 
engineer,” she said. “ His name is Brian Baird. 
He ’s just back from Central America. I met him 
on the steamer once. He was traveling second 
cabin. My — family — won’t — let — me — have 
— him.” 

The Woodland Girl threw back her head and 
laughed, and smothered her laugh contritely with 
her hand. “ Your family won’t let you have him? ” 
she mumbled. “ What a funny idea ! What 
has your family got to do about it ? ” Her breath 
began to quicken, and she reached out suddenly and 
clutched Adele Reitzen’s shoulder. “ Do you know 
where my uncle’s musty old law library is?” she 
hurried. “ It ’s downstairs, you know, close to the 
store room — nobody ever uses it. You go down 
there just as fast as you possibly can, and wait 
there, and I ’ll be back in five minutes with the — 
Love Man.” 

Before Adele Reitzen’s feebler courage could pro- 
test, the Woodland Girl was scurrying up the short 
flight to the dressing-room and pawing like a prank- 
276 


HEART OF THE CITY 


isli terrier through the neatly folded evening coats 
that snuggled across the bed. Tingling with excite- 
ment, she arrayed herself finally in the luxuriantly 
muffling black and gold splendor, and started cau- 
tiously down the long, creaky front stairs. 

Like the inimitable, familiar thrill of little wild, 
phosphorescent eyes looming suddenly out of the 
black night-woods at home, the adventure chal- 
lenged her impetuous curiosity. Bored puzzlingly 
by the big city’s utter inability to reproduce the 
identical, simple lake-and-forest emotionalism that 
was the breath of life to her, she quickened now 
precipitately to the possible luring mystery in hu- 
man eyes. Through the dark mahogany stripes of 
the balustrade, the drawing-room candles flared and 
sputtered like little finger-pinches of fluid flame, 
and the violin’s shuddering voice chased after her, 
taunting, “ Hurry ! Hurry ! Or it won’t be there ! ” 
Beyond the lights and music, and the friendly creak- 
ing stairs, the strange black night opened forth like 
the scariest sort of a bottomless pit; but as yet, in 
all the girl’s twenty coltish years nothing except 
headache and heart-beat had ever made her feel per- 
fectly throbbing-positive that she was alive. She 
could spare the headache, but she could not spare the 
heart-beat. Paddling with muscle-strained shoulder 
and heaving breast across a November-tortured lake, 
or huddling under forbidden pine trees in a rackety 
277 


HEART OF THE CITY 


August thunder storm, or floundering on broken 
snowshoes into the antlered presence of an as- 
tounded moose — Fun and Fear were synonymous 
to her. 

Once on the street, like water to thirst, the cold 
night air freshened and vivified her. Over her head 
the electric lights twinkled giddily like real stars. 
On either side of her the huge, hulking houses 
reared up like pleasant imitation mountains. Her 
trailing cloak slipped now and then from her clutch- 
ing fingers, but she trudged along toward the cor- 
ner with just one simple, supreme sense of pleasur- 
able excitement — somewhere out of the un- 
fathomed shadows a real, live Adventure was going 
to rise up and scare her. 

But the man, when he came, did not scare her one 
hundredth part as much as she scared him, though 
he jumped at her from the snuggling fur robe of a 
stranded automobile, and snatched at her arm with 
an almost bruising intensity. 

“ Oh, Adele,” he cried huskily, “ I thought you 
had failed me again.” 

The Woodland Girl threw back her somber hood 
and stood there all blonde and tousle-haired and 
astonishing under the electric light. “ I ’m not your 
Adele,” she explained breathlessly. “ I ’m just 
Chloe Curtis. Adele sent me out to tell you that 
she absolutely could n’t — could n’t come. You 
278 


HEART OF THE CITY 


yourself would have seen that it was horridly im- 
possible. But you are to go back to the house now 
with me — to my uncle’s old unused library and see 
Adele yourself for as much as fifteen minutes. No 
one — oh,. I’m sure that no one — could persuade 
a woman to be brave — on a street corner; but I 
think that perhaps if you had a chance to see 
Adele all alone, she would be very — extraordinarily 
brave.” 

Anger, resentment, confusion, dismay flared like 
successive explosions in the man’s face, and faded 
again, leaving his flesh utter ash gray. 

“ It was plucky of you to come,” he muttered 
grimly, “ but I have n’t quite reached the point yet 
— thank you — where I go sneaking round peo- 
ple’s unused rooms to meet any one ! ” 

“ Is it so very different from sneaking round 
street corners?” said the Woodland Girl. 

The man’s head lifted proudly. “ I don’t go 
* sneaking ’ round street corners,” he answered sim- 
ply. “ All Outdoors belongs to me ! But I won’t 
go secretly to any house that does n’t welcome me.” 

The Woodland Girl began to stamp her foot. 
“ But the house does welcome you,” she insisted. 
“ It ’s my visity-house, and you are to come there as 
my friend.” 

In her ardor she turned and faced him squarely 
under the light, and winced to see how well worth 
279 


HEART OF THE CITY 


facing he was — for the husband of a coward. 
There was no sleek New York about him, certainly, 
but rather the merge of all cities and many coun- 
tries, a little breath of unusualness, a touch of mys- 
tery, a trifling suggestion, perhaps, of more dusty 
roads than smug pavements, twenty-eight or thirty 
years, surely, of adventurous youth. Impulsively 
she put out her hand to him. “ Oh, please come,” 
she faltered. “ I — think you are so nice.” 

With a little laugh that had no amusement in it, 
nor pleasure, nor expectation, nor any emotion that 
the Woodland Girl had ever experienced, he stood 
and stared at her with some sudden impulse. 
“Does Adele really want me to come?” he asked 
trenchantly. 

“ Why yes,” insisted the Woodland Girl. “ It ’s 
life or death for you and Adele.” 

Ten minutes later, standing on guard at the edge 
of the library door, the Woodland Girl heard, for 
the first time in her life, the strange, low, vibrant, 
mysterious mate-tone of a human voice. If she had 
burrowed her head in a dozen pillows, she could not 
have failed to sense the amazing wonder of the 
sound, though the clearer-worded detail of hurried 
plans and eager argument and radiant acquiescence 
passed by her unobserved. “ But I must be perfectly 
sure that you love me,” persisted the man’s voice. 
280 


HEART OF THE CITY 


“ You and — you only,” echoed the woman’s pas- 
sion. 

Then suddenly, like a practical joke sprung by a 
half-witted Fate, the store room door opened with 
casual, exploring pleasantness, and the Journalist 
and Adele Reitzen’s promised husband and big Peter 
himself stepped out into the hallway. 

Before the surprised greeting in two men’s faces 
the Woodland Girl retreated step by step, until at 
last with a quick turn she whirled back into the 
dingy, gas-lit library — her chalky face, her staring 
eyes proclaiming only too plainly the calamity which 
she had no time to stuff into words. 

Close behind her followed the three smiling, un- 
suspicious intruders. Even then the incident might 
have passed without gross awkwardness if the 
Woodland Girl’s uncle and aunt had not suddenly 
joined the company. From the angry, outraged 
flush on the two older faces it was perfectly evident 
that these two, at least, had been waylaid by kitchen 
gossip. 

Brian Baird laughed. Like a manly lover goaded 
and hectored and cajoled too long into unworthy 
secrecy, his pulses fairly jumped to meet the frank, 
forced issue. But with a quick, desperate appeal 
Adele Reitzen silenced the triumphant speech on his 
lips. “ Let me manage it!” she whispered, so ve- 
281 


HEART OF THE CITY 


hemently that the man yielded to her, and stepped 
back against the fireplace, and spread his arms with 
studied, indolent ease along the mantel, like a rustic 
cross tortured out of a supple willow withe. One 
of his hands played teasingly with a stale spray of 
Christmas greens. Nothing but the straining, 
white-knuckled grip of his other hand modified the 
absolute, wilful insolence of his pose. 

As for Adele, her face was ghastly. 

With crude, uncontrolled venom the Woodland 
Girl’s aunt plunged into the emergency. “ Adele,” 
she cried shrilly, “ I think you owe your fiance an 
explanation! You promised us faithfully last year 
that you would never, never see Mr. Baird again — 
and now to-night our chauffeur saw you steal out to 
the street corner to meet him — like a common 
shop-girl. And you dare to bring him back — 
to my house! What have you to say for your- 
self?” 

For the fraction of a moment Adele Reitzen’s 
superb beauty straightened up to its full majestic 
height, and all the love-pride that was in her white, 
white flesh flamed gloriously in her face. Then her 
sleek, prosperous, arrogant city lover stepped sud- 
denly forward where the yellow light struck bleakly 
across his shrewd, small eyes and his thin, relentless 
mouth. 

“ I should be very glad, indeed, to hear what you 
282 


HEART OF THE CITY 


have to say,” he announced, and his voice was like 
a nicked knife blade. 

Flush by flush by flush the red glory fled from 
Adele Reitzen’s face. Her throat began to flutter. 
Her knees crumpled under her. Fear went over her 
like a gray fog. 

With one despairing hand she reached back to the 
Woodland Girl. “ Oh, tell them it was you,” she 
whispered hotly. “ Oh, tell them it was you.” Her 
scared face brightened viciously. “ It was you — 
you know! Tell them — oh, tell them anything — 
only save me ! ” 

The Woodland Girl’s eyes were big with horror. 
She started to speak, she started to protest, but be- 
fore the jumbled words could leave her lips Adele 
Reitzen turned to the others and blurted out hys- 
terically : 

“ Surely I can’t be expected to keep even a love- 
secret under these — distressing circumstances. It 
was Chloe who went out to the street corner to- 
night — like a common shop-girl — to meet Brian 
Baird. She wore my cloak on purpose to disguise 
her." 

Like the blaring scream of a discordant trumpet, 
the treacherous, flatted truth crashed into the Wood- 
land Girl’s startled senses, and the man in the shape 
of a sagging willow cross started up and cried out, 
“ My God!” 


283 


HEART OF THE CITY 


For a second the Woodland Girl stood staring 
into his dreadful, chaotic face, then she squared her 
shoulders and turned to meet the wrathful, con- 
temptuous surprise in her uncle’s and aunt’s fea- 
tures. 

“ So it was you,” sneered the uncle, “ embroil- 
ing our decent household in a common, vulgar in- 
trigue ? ” 

“ So it was you,” flamed her aunt, “ you who have 
been posing all these days as an Innocent? ” 

Frantic with perplexity, muddled with fear, torn 
by conflicting chivalries, the Woodland Girl stared 
back and forth from Adele Reitzen’s agonized plea 
to the grim, inscrutable gleam in Brian Baird’s eyes. 
As though every living, moving verb had been 
ripped out of that night’s story, and all the inflexible 
nouns were printing themselves slam-bang one on 
top of another — Roses, Wine, Music, Silver, Dia- 
monds, Fir-Balsam telescoped each other in her 
senses. 

“ Your father sent you down here,” persisted her 
aunt brutally, “ on the private plea to me that he 
was planning to be married again — but I can read- 
ily see that perhaps no one would exactly want 
you.” 

The Woodland Girl’s heart began to pound. 

“ We — are — waiting,” prodded her uncle’s icy 


voice. 


284 


HEART OF THE CITY 


Suddenly the Girl’s memory quickened. Once, 
long ago, her father had said to her : “ Little 

Daughter, if you are ever in fear and danger by sea 
or land — or city, which is neither sea nor land — 
turn always to that man, and to that man only, 
whom you would trust in the deep woods. Put 
your imagination to work, not your reason. You 
have no reason ! ” 

Desperately she turned to Peter. His face, 
robbed utterly of its affection, was all a-shock with 
outraged social proprieties, merging the merest bit 
unpleasantly into the racy appreciation of a unique 
adventure. Panic-stricken, she turned to the Jour- 
nalist. Already across the Journalist’s wine-flushed 
face the pleasant, friendly smile was souring into 
worldly skepticism and mocking disillusionment. 

She shut her eyes. “ O Big Woods, help me ! ” 
she prayed. “ O Cross Storm, warn me ! O Rough 
Trail, guide me ! ” 

Behind her tightly scrunched lids her worried 
brain darkened like a jumbled midnight forest. 
Jaded, bedraggled, aching with storm and terror, 
she saw herself stumbling into the sudden dazzling 
splurge of a stranger’s camp fire. Was it a man 
like Peter? Was it the Journalist? She began to 
shiver. Then her heart gave a queer, queer jump, 
and she opened her eyes stark wide and searched 
deep into Brian Baird’s livid face. One of his 


HEART OF THE CITY 


hands still strained at the wooden mantel. The 
other still bruised the pungent balsam tip between its 
restive fingers. His young hair was too gray about 
his temples. His shoulders were too tired with 
life’s pack burdens. His eyes had probably grown 
more bitter that night than any woman’s lips could 
eve* sweeten again. And yet — 

Down from the far-away music room floated the 
quavering, passionate violin wail of the boy who had 
dared to temporize with Fate. Up from the close- 
nudging street crashed the confusing slap of hoofs 
and the mad whir of wheels racing not so much for 
the Joy of the Destination as for the Thrill of the 
Journey. She gave a little gasping sob, and Brian 
Baird stooped forward incredulously, as though 
from the yellow glare of his camp fire he had only 
just that instant sensed the faltering footfall of a 
wayfarer in acute distress, and could scarcely dis- 
tinguish even yet through the darkness the detailed 
features of the apparition. 

For a second, startled eyes defied startled eyes, and 
then suddenly, out of his own meager ration of 
faith or fortune or immediate goodness, the man 
straightened up, and smiled — the simple, honest, 
unquestioning camp-fire smile — the smile of food 
and blanket, the smile of welcome, the smile of shel- 
ter, the signal of the gladly-shared crust — and the 
Woodland Girl gave a low, wild cry of joy, and ran 
. 286 


HEART OF THE CITY 

across the room to him, and wheeled back against 
him, close, tight, with her tousled hair grazing his 
haggard cheek and her brown hands clutching hard 
at the sweep of his arms along the mantel. 

“ Adele Reitzen is right,” she cried out trium- 
phantly. “ This is my — man ! ” 


287 





THE PINK SASH 



THE PINK SASH 


O man could have asked the ques- 
tion more simply. The whole 
gaunt, gigantic Rocky Mountain 
landscape seemed indeed most pe- 
culiarly conducive to simple emo- 
tions. 

Yet Donas Guthrie’s original remark had been 
purely whimsical and distinctly apropos of nothing 
at all. The careless knocking of his pipe against 
the piazza’s primitive railing had certainly not pre- 
pared the way for any particularly vital statement. 

“ Up — to — the — time — he ’s — thirty,” 
drawled the pleasant, deep, distinctly masculine 
voice, “ up — to — the — time — he ’s — thirty, no 
man has done the things that he ’s really wanted to 
do — but only the things that happened to come his 
way. He ’s forced into business to please his father, 
and cajoled into the Episcopal Church to gratify his 
mother, and bullied into red neckties to pacify his 
sister Isabel. But once having reached the grown- 
up, level-headed, utterly independent age of thirty, 
a man ’s a fool, I tell you, who does n’t sit down de- 
291 



THE PINK SASH 


liberately, and roll up his sleeves, and square his 
jaw, and list out, one by one, the things that he 
wants in the presumable measure of lifetime that ’s 
left him — and go ahead and get them! ” 

“ Why, surely,” said the young woman, without 
the slightest trace of surprise. Something in her 
matter-of-fact acquiescence made Donas Guthrie 
smile a trifle shrewdly. 

“ Oh ! So you ’ve got your own list all made 
out ? ” he quizzed. Around the rather tired-looking 
corners of Esther Davidson’s mouth the tiniest pos- 
sible flicker of amusement began to show. 

“ No, not all made out,” she answered frankly. 
“You see, I wasn’t thirty — until yesterday.” 

Stooping with cheerful unconcern to blow a little 
fluff of tobacco ash from his own khaki-colored 
knees to hers, Guthrie eyed her delightedly from 
under his heavy brows. 

“ Oh, this is working out very neatly and pleas- 
antly,” he mused, all agrin. “ Ever since you joined 
our camping party at Laramie, jumping off the train 
as white-faced and out of breath as though you’d 
been running to catch up with us all the way from 
Boston — indeed, ever since you first wrote me at 
Morristown, asking full particulars about the whole 
expedition and begging us to go to the Sierra Ne- 
vadas instead and blotted 4 Sierra ’ twice and crossed 
it out once — and then in final petulance spelled it 
292 


THE PINK SASH 


with three ‘ r’s,’ I Ve been utterly consumed with 
curiosity to know just how old you are.” 

“Thirty years — and one morning,” said the 
young woman — absent-mindedly. 

“ W-h-e-w ! ” gasped Guthrie. “ But that ’s a 
ripe old age ! Surely, you Ve no time to lose ! ” 

Rummaging through his pockets with mock in- 
tensity he thrust into her hands, at last, a small pad 
of paper and a pencil. 

“ Now quick ! ” he insisted. “ Make out your 
list before it ’s too late to profit by it! ” 

The woman was evidently perfectly willing to 
comply with every playful aspect of his mood, but it 
was equally evident that she did not intend to be 
hurried about it. Quite perversely she began to 
dally with the pencil. 

“ But, you see, I don’t know exactly just what 
kind of a list you mean,” she protested. 

“ Oh, shucks ! ” laughed the man. “ Here, give 
me the paper! Now — head it like this : * I, Esther 
Davidson, spinster, at. thirty years and a few min- 
utes over, do hereby promise and attest that no mat- 
ter how unwilling to die I may be when my time 
comes, I shall, at least, not feel that life has de- 
frauded me if I have succeeded in achieving and 
possessing the following brief list of experiences 
and substances.’ There ! ” he finished triumphantly. 
“ Now do you see how easy and business-like it all 
293 


THE PINK SASH 


is? Just the plainest possible rating of the things 
you ’d like to have before you ’re willing to die.” 

Cautiously Esther Davidson took the paper from 
his hand and scanned it with slow-smiling eyes. 

“ The — things — I ’d — like to have — before 
I’m — willing — to — die,” she mused indolently. 
Then suddenly into her placid face blazed an aston- 
ishing flame of passion that vanished again as 
quickly as it came. “ My God ! ” she said. “ The 
things I ’ve got to have before I ’m willing to die! ” 

Stretching the little paper taut across her knees, 
she began to scribble hasty, impulsive words and 
phrases, crossing and recrossing, making and eras- 
ing, now frowning fiercely down on the unoffending 
page, now staring off narrow-eyed and smilingly 
speculative into the blue-green spruce tops. 

It was almost ten minutes before she spoke again. 
Then : “ How do you spell amethyst ? ” she asked 

meditatively. 

The man gave a groan of palpable disgust. 
“ Oh, I say,” he reproached her. “ You ’re not 
playing fair! This was to be a really bona fide 
statement you know.” 

Without looking up the young woman lifted her 
hand and gesticulated across the left side of her 
mannish, khaki-colored flannel shirt. 

“ Cross my heart ! ” she affirmed solemnly. 
“ This is a perfectly * honest-in jun ’ list! ” 

294 


THE PINK SASH 


Then she tore up everything she had written and 
began all over again, astonishingly slowly, astonish- 
ingly neatly, on a fresh sheet of paper. 

“Of course, at first,” she explained painstakingly, 
“ you think there are just about ten thousand things 
that you ’ve simply got to have, but when you really 
stop to sort them out, and pick and choose a bit, 
and narrow them all down to actual essentials ; nar- 
row them all down to just the ‘ Passions of the 
Soul,’ as it were, why, then, there really are n’t so 
many after all! Only one, two, three, four, five, 
six, seven, eight,” she counted on her fingers. “ At 
first, for instance,” she persisted frankly, “ it seemed 
to me that I could never, never die happy until I had 
possessed a very large — oh, I mean an inordinately 
large amethyst brooch that simply wallowed in 
pearls, but honestly now as a real treasure-trove, I 
can see that I ’d infinitely rather be able to remem- 
ber that once upon a time I ’d — stroked a lion’s 
face; just one, long, slow, so ft- furred, yellow stroke 
from the browny-pink tip of his nose to the extrem- 
est shaggy end of his mane — and he had n’t bitten 
me!” 

“ My Heavens ! ” gasped the man. “ Are you 
crazy? What kind of a list have you been making 
out anyway ? ” 

A little acridly she thrust both her list and her 
hands into the side pockets of her riding skirt. 

295 


THE PINK SASH 


“ What kind of a list did you think I would make 
out ? ” she asked sharply. “ Something all about 
machinery ? And getting a contract for city paving 
stones? Or publicly protesting the new football 
rules ? Goodness ! Does it have to be a ‘ wise ’ 
list ? Does it have to be a worthy list ? Something 
that would really look commendable in a church 
magazine? This was all your idea, you know! 
You asked me, did n’t you, to write out, just for fun, 
the things I ’d got to have before I ’d be willing to 
die?” 

“ Oh, come now,” laughed the man. “ Please 
don’t get stuffy about it. You surprised me so 
about stroking the lion’s face that I simply had to 
chaff you a little. Truly, I care a great deal about 
seeing that list. When you got off the train that 
day it rattled me a confounded lot to see that your 
camping togs were cut out of exactly the same piece 
of cloth that mine were. Professor Ellis and his 
wife and Doctor Andrews jollied me a good bit 
about it in fact, but — hang it all — it ’s begin- 
ning to dawn on me rather cozily, though I admit 
still embarrassingly, that maybe your mind and 
mine are cut out of the same piece of cloth, too. 
Please let me see what you ’ve written! ” 

With a grimace that was half reluctance, half de- 
fiance, the young woman pulled the paper from her 
296 


THE PINK SASH 


pocket, smoothed it out on her knees for an instant 
and handed it to him. 

“ Oh, very well, then,” she said. “ Help your- 
self to the only authentic list of my ‘ Heart’s De- 
sires.’ ” Then suddenly her whole face brightened 
with amusement and she shook a sun-browned finger 
threateningly at him. “ Now remember,” she 
warned him, “ I don’t have to justify this list, no 
matter how trivial it sounds, no matter how foolish 
even ; it is excuse enough for it — it is dignity 
enough for it, that it happens to be so.” 

“ Yes, surely,” acknowledged the man. 

Either consciously or unconsciously — then — he 
took off his battered slouch hat and placed it softly 
on the seat beside him. The act gave the very faint- 
est possible suggestion of reverence to the joke. 
Then, rather slowly and hesitatingly, after the man- 
ner of a man who is not specially accustomed to 
reading aloud, he began : 

“ Things That I, Esther Davidson, Am Really 
Obliged to Have Before I ’m Willing to Die: No. 
i. A solid summer of horseback riding on a rusty 
brown pony among really scary mountains. No. 2. 
A year’s work at Oxford in Social Economics. No. 
3. One single, solitary sunset view of the Bay of 
Naples. No. 4. A very, very large oil-painting por- 
trait of a cloud — a great white, warm, cotton- 

297 


THE PINK SASH 


batting looking, summer Sunday afternoon sort of 
a cloud — I mean ; the kind that you used to see as a 
child when all 4 chock full ’ of chicken and ice 
cream and serene thoughts about Heaven, you lay 
stretched out flat on the cool green grass and stared 
right up into the face of God, and never even 
guessed what made you blink so. No. 5. The abil- 
ity to buy one life-saving surgical operation for 
some one who probably would n’t otherwise have 
afforded it. No. 6. A perfectly good dinner. No. 
7. A completely happy Christmas. No. 8. A pink 
sash. That ’s all.” 

With really terrifying gravity, the man put down 
the finished page and lifted his searching eyes to the 
woman’s flushing, self-conscious face. 

44 Is — a — pink — sash — exactly a — a — pas- 
sion? ” he probed in much perplexity. 

44 Oh, yes ! ” nodded the young woman briskly. 
44 Oh, yes, indeed! It ’s' an obsession in my life. 
It ’s a groove in my brain. In the middle of the 
night I wake and find myself sitting bolt upright in 
bed saying it. The only time I ever took ether I 
prattled persistently concerning it. When a Spring 
sunshine is so marvelous that it makes me feel faint, 
when the Vox Humana stop in a church-organ snarls 
my heart-strings like an actual hand, when the great 
galloping, tearing fire-engine horses come clanging 
298 




“Is — a — pink 


sash — exactly a — a — passion?” 





































































































































































































1 
























THE PINK SASH 


like mad around the street corner, it ’s the one 
definite idea that explodes in my consciousness. It 
began way back when I was a tiny six-year-old child 
at a Maine woods 4 camp meeting/ Did you ever 
see a really primitive ‘ camp meeting ’ ? All fir- 
balsam trees and little rustic benches and pink cali- 
coes and Grand Army suits and high cheek-bones 
and low insteps and — lots of noise? Rather in- 
spiring too, sometimes, or at least soul excitative. 
It might do a good deal to any high-strung six-year- 
old kiddie. Anyway, I saw the old village drunkard 
jump up and wave his arms and wail ingenuously: 
‘ I want to be a Christian ! ’ And a palsied crone 
beside me moaned and sobbed ‘ I want to be bap- 
tized ! ’ And even my timid, gentle mother leaped 
impetuously to her feet and announced quite pub- 
licly to every one ‘ I want to be washed in the 
Blood of the Lamb!’ And all about me I saw 
frenzied neighbors and strangers dashing about mak- 
ing these uncontrollable, confidential proclamations. 
And suddenly, to my meager, indefinite baby-brain, 
there rushed such an exultancy of positive personal 
conviction that my poor little face must have been 
literally transfigured with it, for my father lifted me 
high to his tight-coated shoulders and cried out 
ecstatically : ‘ A little child shall lead them ! Hear ! 
Hear ! ’ And with an emphasis on the personal pro- 
299 


THE PINK SASH 


noun which I hate to remember even at this remote 
date, I screamed forth at the top of my lungs : ' I 

want — a pink sash ! ’ ” 

“ And did n’t you get it? ” said Donas Guthrie. 
The young woman crooked one eyebrow rather 
comically. “ N-o,” she said, “ I never got it! ” 

“ But you could get it any time now,” argued the 
man. 

Helplessly she threw out the palms of her hands 
and the unexpected gesture displayed an amazing 
slimness and whiteness of wrist. 

“ Stupid ! ” she laughed. “ What would I do 
with a pink sash now? ” Ruthlessly her quick eyes 
traveled down the full length of her scant, rough 
skirt to the stubbed toes of her battered brown riding 
boots. “ Dust on the highway and chalk in the 
classroom and ‘ grown-up-ness ’ everywhere ! ” she 
persisted dully. “ That ’s the real tragedy of grow- 
ing up — not that we outgrow our original desires, 
but that retaining those desires, we outgrow the 
ability to find satisfaction in them. People ought 
to think of that, you know, when they thwart a 
child’s ten-cent passion for a tin trumpet. Fifty 
years later, when that child is a bank president, it 
may drive him almost crazy to have a toy-shop with 
a whole window-full of tin trumpets come and cud- 
dle right next door to his bank — and nothing that 
the man can do with them ! ” 

3 °° 


THE PINK SASH 


Like a little gray veil the tired look fell again 
over her face. The man saw it and shuddered. 

“ Psychology is my subject at Varndon College, 
you know/’ she continued listlessly, “ and so I sup- 
pose I ’m. rather specially interested in freakish 
mental things. Anyway — pink sashes or Noah’s 
arks or enough sugar in your cocoa — I have a 
theory that no child ever does outgrow its ungrati- 
fied legitimate desires; though subsequent maturity 
may bring him to the point where his original desire 
has reached such astounding proportions that the 
original object can no longer possibly appease it.” 

Reminiscently, her narrowing eyes turned back 
their inner vision to the far-away grotesque incident 
of the camp meeting. “ It is n’t as though a child 
asked for a thing the very first time that he thought 
of it,” she protested a trifle pathetically. “ An idea 
has been sown and has grown and germinated in his 
mind a pretty long time before he gets up his cour- 
age to speak to anybody about it. Oh, I tell you, 
sir, the time to grant anybody a favor is the day the 
favor is asked, for that day is the one psychological 
moment of the world when supply and demand are 
keyed exactly to each other’s limits, and can be 
mated beatifically to grow old, or die young, to- 
gether. But after that day — ! 

“ Why, even with grown people,” she added 
hastily. “ Did you ever know a marriage to turn 
3 QI 


THE PINK SASH 


out to be specially successful where the man had 
courted a reluctant woman for years and years be- 
fore she finally yielded to him? It ’s perfectly as- 
tonishing how soon a wife like that is forced to 
mourn : ‘ Why did he court me so long and so furi- 
ously if he really cared as little as this? I ’m just 
exactly the same person that I was in the begin- 
ning! ’ — Yes, that ’s precisely the trouble. In the 
long time that she has kept her man waiting, she 
has remained just exactly the same small object that 
she was in the beginning, but the man’s hunger for 
her has materialized and spiritualized and idealized 
a thousandfold beyond her paltry capacity to satisfy 
it.” 

“ That ’s a funny way to look at it,” mused Donas 
Guthrie. 

“ Is it?” said the young woman, a trifle petu- 
lantly. “ It does n’t seem funny to me ! ” 

Then to Guthrie’s infinite astonishment and em- 
barrassment the tears welled up suddenly into her 
eyes and she turned her head abruptly away and be- 
gan to beat a nervous tattoo with one hand on the 
flimsy piazza railing. 

In the moment’s awkward silence that ensued, the 
little inn’s clattery kitchen wafted up its pleasant, 
odorous, noon-day suggestion of coffee and bacon. 

“W-h-e-w!” gloated Guthrie desperately, “ but 
that smells good ! ” 


302 


THE PINK SASH 


“ It does n’t smell good to me,” said the young 
woman tartly. 

With a definite thud the tilting leg of Guthrie’s 
chair came whacking down on the piazza floor. 

“ Why,, you inconsistent little gourmand ! ” he ex- 
claimed. “ Then why did you give ‘ one perfectly 
good dinner ’ a place on your list of necessities? ” 

“ I don’t know,” whispered the young woman, 
a trifle tremulously. Then abruptly she burst out 
laughing, and the face that she turned to Guthrie 
again was all deliciously mussed up like a child’s, 
with tears and smiles and breeze-blown wisps of 
hair. 

“ That dinner item was just another silly thing,” 
she explained half bashfully, half defiantly. “ It ’s 
only that although I practically never eat much of 
anything on ordinary occasions, whenever I get into 
any kind of danger, whenever the train runs off the 
track, or the steamer threatens to sink, or my car 
gets stuck in the subway, I ’m seized with the 
most terrific gnawing hunger — as though — as 
though — ” Furiously the red flushed into her face 
again. “ Well — eternity sounds so 1-long,” she 
stammered, “ and I have a perfect horror, some- 
how — of going to Heaven — on an empty stom- 
ach.” 

In mutual appreciation of a suddenly relaxed ten- 
sion, the man’s laughter and the woman’s rang out 
303 


THE PINK SASH 


together throughout the door-yard and startled a 
grazing pony into a whimpering whinny of sym- 
pathy. 

“ I knew you ’d think my list was funny,” pro- 
tested the young woman. “ I knew perfectly well 
that every single individual item on it would aston- 
ish you.” 

Meditatively Donas Guthrie refilled his pipe and 
evidently illuminated both the tobacco and the situa- 
tion with the same match. 

“ It is n’t the things that are on your list that as- 
tonish me,” he remarked puffingly. “ It ’s the 
things that are n’t on it that have given me the bit of 
a jolt.” 

“ Such as what ? ” frowned the young woman, 
sliding jerkily out to the edge of her chair. 

“ Why, I ’d always supposed that women were in- 
herently domestic,” growled Guthrie. “ I ’d always 
somehow supposed that Love and Home would fig- 
ure pretty largely on any woman’s ‘ List of Necessi- 
ties.’ But you ! For Heaven’s sake, have n’t you 
ever even thought of man in any specific relation to 
your own life? ” 

“ No, except in so far as he might retard my ac- 
complishment of the things on my list,” she an- 
swered frankly. Out of the gray film of pipe- 
smoke, her small face loomed utterly serene, utterly 
304 


THE PINK SASH 

honest, utterly devoid of coquetry or self-conscious- 
ness. 

“ Any man would be apt to ‘ retard ’ your desire 
to stroke a lion’s face,” said Guthrie grimly. “ But 
then,” with a flicker of humor, “ but then I see 
you ’ve omitted that item from your revised list. 
Your only thought about man then,” he continued 
slowly, “ is his probable tendency to interfere with 
your getting the things out of life that you most 
want.” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Oh, this is quite a novel idea to me,” said Guth- 
rie, all a-smile again. “You mean then — if I 
judge your premises correctly — you mean then 
that if on the contrary you found a man who would 
really facilitate the accomplishment of your ‘ heart’s 
desires,’ you ’d be willing to think a good deal about 
him ? ” 

“ Oh, yes ! ” said the young woman. 

“ You mean then,” persisted Guthrie, “ you mean 
then, just for the sake of the argument, that if I, 
for instance, could guarantee for you every single 
little item on this list, you ’d be willing to marry 
even me ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

Altogether unexpectedly Guthrie burst out laugh- 
ing. 


20 


305 


THE PINK SASH 


Instantly a little alarmed look quickened in the 
young woman’s sleepy eyes. “ Does it seem cold- 
blooded to you ? ” she asked anxiously. 

“ No, not exactly ‘ cold ’ blooded, but certainly a 
little cooler blooded than any man would have dared 
to hope for,” smiled Guthrie. 

The frowning perplexity deepened in the young 
woman’s face. “ You surely don’t misunderstand 
me?” she pleaded. “ You don’t think I’m mer- 
cenary or anything horrid like that ? Suppose I do 
make a man’s aptitude for gratifying my eight par- 
ticular whims the supreme test of his marital at- 
tractiveness for me — it ’s not, you must under- 
stand, by the sign of his material ability in the mat- 
ter that I should recognize the Man Who Was 
Made for Me — but by the sign of his spiritual will- 
ingness.” 

“ O — h ! ” said Guthrie very leisurely. Then, 
with a trifle more vigor, he picked up the small list 
again and scanned it carefully. 

“ It — would n’t — be — such — a hard — list to 
— fulfil ! ” he resumed presently. “ ‘ A summer 
in the mountains?’ You’re having that now. 
‘Oxford?’ ‘ Glimpse of Naples?’ ‘Cloud Pic- 
ture ? ’ ‘ Surgical Operation ? ’ ‘ Pink Sash ? ’ 
‘ Good Dinner? ’ ‘ Christmas? ’ Why there ’s 
really nothing here that I could n’t provide for you, 
myself, if you ’d only give me time.” 

306 


THE PINK SASH 


With mischievous unconcern he smiled at the 
young woman. With equally mischievous uncon- 
cern the young woman smiled back at him. 

“ What an extraordinary conversation we ’ve had 
this morning,” she said. As though quite exhausted 
by the uniqueness of it, she slid a little further down 
into her seat and turned her cheek against the firm 
support of the chair-back. 

“ What an extraordinary understanding it has 
brought us to ! ” exclaimed the man, scanning her 
closely. 

“ I don’t see anything particularly — understandy 
about it,” denied the young woman wearily. 

It was then that Donas Guthrie asked his simple 
question, boring his khaki-colored elbows into his 
khaki-colored knees. 

“ Little Psychology Teacher,” he said very gently, 
“ Little Psychology Teacher, Dr. Andrews says that 
you ’ve got typhoid fever. He ’s feared it now for 
some time, and you know it ’s against his orders — 
your being up to-day. So as long as I ’ve proved 
myself here and now, by your own test, the Man- 
Whom-You-Were-Looking-For, I suggest that you 
and I be — married this afternoon — before that 
itinerant shiny-shouldered preacher out in the corral 
escapes us altogether — and then we ’ll send the rest 
of the party on about their business, and you and 
Dr. Andrews and Hanlon’s Mary and I will camp 
307 


THE PINK SASH 


right down here where we are — and scrap the old 
typhoid fever to its finish. Will you, Little Psy- 
chology Teacher? ” 

Lifting her white hands to her throbbing temples 
the young woman turned her astonished face jerkily 
toward him. 

“ What — did — you — say ? ” she gasped. 

44 I said : 4 Will you marry me this afternoon? , ” 
repeated Guthrie. 

Bruskly she pushed that part of the phrase 
aside. 44 What did you really say ? ” she insisted. 
44 What did Dr. Andrews say ? ” 

44 Dr. Andrews says that you ’ve got typhoid 
fever,” repeated Guthrie. 

Inertly she blinked her big brown eyes for an in- 
stant. Then suddenly her hands went groping out 
to the arms of her chair. Her face was horror- 
stricken. 44 Why did n’t he tell me, himself? ” 

44 Because I asked him to let me tell you,” said 
Guthrie quietly. 

44 When did he tell you ? ” she persisted. 

44 Just before I came up on the piazza,” said Guth- 
rie. 

44 How did he tell you ? ” she demanded. 

44 How did he tell me?” mused Guthrie wretch- 
edly. After all, underneath his occasional whim- 
sicality he was distinctly literal-minded. 44 How 
did he tell me? Why I saw them all powwowing 
308 


THE PINK SASH 


together in the corral, and Andrews looked up sort 
of queer and said : ‘ Say, Guthrie, that little Psy- 
chology friend of yours has got typhoid fever. 
What in thunder are we going to do ? ” 

The strained lines around Esther Davidson’s 
mouth relaxed for a second. 

“ Well, what in thunder am I going to do? ” she 
joked heroically. But the effort at flippancy was 
evidently quite too much for her. In another in- 
stant her head pitched forward against the piazza 
railing and her voice, when she spoke again, was 
almost indistinguishable. 

“ And you knew all this an hour ago ! ” she ac- 
cused him incoherently. “ Knew my predicament 
— knew my inevitable weakness and fear and mor- 
tification — knew me a stranger among strangers. 
And yet you came up here to jolly me inconse- 
quently — about a million foolish things ! ” 

“ It was because at the end of the hour I hoped 
to be something to you that would quite prevent 
your feeling a ‘ stranger among strangers,’ ” said 
Guthrie very quietly. “ I have asked you to marry 
me this afternoon, you must remember.” 

The young woman’s lip curled tremulously. 
“ You astonish me ! ” she scoffed. “ I had always 
understood that men did not marry very easily. 
Quick to love, slow to marry, is supposed to be 
your most striking characteristic — and here are 
309 


THE PINK SASH 

you asking marriage of me, and you have n’t even 
loved me yet ! ” 

“ You women do not seem to marry any too 
easily,” smiled Guthrie gazing nervously from his 
open watch to the furthest corner of the corral, 
where the preacher’s raw-boned pony, nose in air, 
was stubbornly refusing to take his bit. 

“ Indeed we do marry — perfectly easily — when 
we once love,” retorted the woman contentiously ! 
“ It ’s the love part of it that we are reluctant 
about!” 

“ But I have n’t asked you to love me,” protested 
the man with much patience. “ I merely asked you 
to marry me.” 

The woman’s jaw dropped. “ Out of sympathy 
for my emergency, out of mistaken chivalry, you ’re 
asking me to marry you, and not even pretending 
that you love me ? ” she asked in astonishment. 

“ I have n’t had time to love you yet. I ’ve only 
known you such a little while,” said the man quite 
simply. Almost sternly he rose and began to pace 
up and down the narrow confines of the little piazza. 
“ All I know is,” he asserted, “ that the very first 
moment you stepped off the train at Laramie, I 
knew you were the woman whom I was — going to 
love — sometime.” 

Very softly he slid back into the rustic seat he 
had just vacated, and taking the woman’s small 
310 


THE PINK SASH 

clenched hands in his began to smooth out her fin- 
gers like poor crumpled ribbons. 

“ Now, Little Psychology Teacher/’ he said, “ I 
want you to listen very, very carefully to everything 
I say. Do you like me all right ? ” 

“ Y — e — s.” 

“ Better than you like Andrews or Ellis or even 
the old Judge? ” 

“Oh, yes!” 

“ Ever since we all started out together on the 
Trail you ’ve just sort of naturally fallen to my lot, 
have n’t you ? Whenever you needed your pony’s 
girth tightened, or whenever you wanted a drink 
of water, or whenever the big canyons scared you, 
or whenever the camp fire smoked you, you ’ve just 
sort of naturally turned to me, have n’t you? And 
it would be fair enough, would n’t it, to say that at 
least I ’ve never made any situation worse for you ? 
So that if anything ugly or awkward were going 
to happen — perhaps you really would rather have 
me around than any one else ? ” 

“Yes — surely.” 

“ Maybe even, when we ’ve been watching Ellis 
and his Missis riding ahead, all hand in hand and 
smile in smile, you ’ve wondered a bit, woman-like, 
how it would seem, for instance, to be riding along 
hand in hand and smile in smile with me ? ” 

“ P-o-s-s-i-b-l-y.” 


THE PINK SASH 


“ Never had any special curiosity about how it 
would seem to go hand and hand with — An- 
drews? ” 

“ Foolish! ” 

“ Hooray ! ” cried Guthrie. “ That ’s all that I 
really needed to know ! Oh, don’t feel bashful about 
it. It surely is an absolutely impersonal corfipli- 
ment on your part. It is n’t even you that I ’m 
under obligations to for the kindness, but Nature 
with a great big capital ‘ N.’ Somehow I always 
have had an idea that you women instinctively do 
divide all mankind into three classes: first, Those 
Whom You Couldn’t Possibly Love; second. 
Those Whom You Could Possibly Love, and third, 
the One Man of the World Whom You Actually 
Do Love. And unless this mysterious Nature with 
a capital 4 N ’ has already qualified a man for the 
second class, God himself can’t promote that man 
into the third class. So it seems to me that every 
fellow could save himself an awful lot of misunder- 
standing and wasted time if he ’d do just what I ’ve 
done — make a distinctly preliminary proposal to 
his lady; not * Do you love me?’ which might take 
her fifteen years to decide, but : ‘ Could you love 

me ? ’ which any woman can tell the first time she 
sees you. And if she can’t possibly love you, that 
settles everything neatly then and there, but if she 
can possibly, why, with Nature once on his side, a 
312 


THE PINK SASH 


man ’s a craven who can’t put up a mighty good 
scrap for his coveted prize. Does n’t this all make 
sense to you? ” 

Cannily the young woman lifted her eyes to his 
and fathomed him mutely for an instant. Then : 

“ Perfectly good ‘ sense ’ but no feeling,” she an- 
swered dully. 

“ It ’s only ‘ sense ’ that I ’m trying to make,” ac- 
knowledged Guthrie. “ Now look here, you Little 
Teacher Person, I ’m going to talk to you just as 
bluntly as I would to another fellow. You are in 
a hole — the deuce of a hole! You have got ty- 
phoid fever, and it may run ten days and it may 
run ten weeks! And you are two thousand miles 
from home — among strangers ! And no matter 
how glad I personally may be that you did push on 
and join us, sick or well, from every practical stand- 
point, of course, it surely was heedless and ill-con- 
sidered of you to start off in poor health on a trip 
like this and run the risk of forcing perfectly un- 
concerned strangers to pay for it all. Personally, 
you seem so much to belong to me already that it 
gives me goose-flesh to think of your having to put 
yourself under obligations to any purely conscientious 
person. Mrs. Ellis, of course, will insist, out of com- 
mon humanity, upon giving up her trip and staying 
behind with you, but Mrs. Ellis, Little Teacher, is 
on her honeymoon, and Ellis could n’t stay behind 
313 


THE PINK SASH 


— it ’s his party — he ’d have to go on with his 
people — and you ’d never be able to compensate 
anybody for a broken honeymoon, and the Judge’s 
youngster could n’t nurse a sick kitten, and the 
two women teachers from New York have been 
planning seven years for this trip, they told me, 
and we could n’t decently take it away from them. 
But you and I, Little Psychology Lady, are not 
strangers to each other. Hanlon’s Mary here at 
the ranch house, rough as she is, has at least the 
serving hands 'of a woman, and Andrews belongs 
naturally to the tribe which is consecrated to in- 
conveniences, and both can be compensated accord- 
ingly. And I would have married you, anyway, 
before another year was out! Yes, I would! ” 

Apparently ignoring everything that he had said, 
she turned her face scowlingly toward the sound of 
hammering that issued suddenly through the piazza 
door. 

“ Oh, Glory ! ” she complained. “ Are they mak- 
ing my coffin already? ” 

With a little laugh, Guthrie relinquished her limp 
fingers, and jumping up, took another swift turn 
along the piazza, stopping only to bang the door 
shut again. When he faced her once more the 
twinkle was all gone from his eyes. 

“ You ’re quite right, what you said about men,” 
he resumed with desperate seriousness. “We are 
314 


THE PINK SASH 


a heap sight quicker in our susceptibilities than in 
our mentalities ! Therefore, no sane man ever does 
marry till his brain has caught up with his emo- 
tions! But sometimes, you know, something hap- 
pens that hustles a man’s brain along a bit, and this 
time my brain seems fairly to have jumped to its 
destination and clean-beaten even the emotions in 
the race. In cool, positive judgment I tell you I 
want to marry you this afternoon. 

“ You ’ve confessed yourself, have n’t you, that 
you ’ve no severer ideal for marriage than that a 
man should be generous enough to give your per- 
sonality, no matter how capricious, a chance to 
breathe ? Have n’t I qualified sufficiently as that 
amiable man? More than that, I ’m free to love 
you ; I ’m certainly keen to serve you ; I ’m reason- 
ably well able to provide for you, and you naturally 
have a right to know that I ’ve led a decent life. 
It ’s ten good years now since I was thirty and 
first found nerve enough to break away from the 
stifling business life I hated and get out into the 
open, where there ’s surely less money but infinitely 
more air. And in ten years I ’ve certainly found 
considerable chance to fulfil a few of the items in 
my own little ‘ List of Necessities.’ I ’ve seen Asia 
and I ’ve seen Africa, and I ’ve written the book 
I ’ve always wanted to write on North American 
mountain structures. 


315 


THE PINK SASH 


“ But there ’s a lot more that I crave to do. 
Maybe I ’ve got a bit of a ‘ capricious personality * 
myself ! Maybe I also have been hunting for the 
mate who would give my personality a chance to 
breathe. Certainly I ’ve never wanted any home 
yet, except when the right time came, the arms of 
the right woman. And I guess you must be she, 
because you ’re the first woman I ’ve ever seen whom 
I ’d trust to help me just as hard to play my chosen 
games as I ’d help her to play hers! I tell you — 
I want — very much — to marry you this after- 
noon. 

“ Why do you dally with me so ? Is n’t it your 
own argument that there ’s only just one day in the 
love-life of a man and woman when the question 
and the answer mate exactly, and the books are bal- 
anced perfectly even for the new start together? 
Demand and supply, debit and credit, hunger and 
food ? You, wild for help, and I wild to help you ! 
What difference does it make what you call it? 
Is n’t this our day? ” 

“ For a man who ’s usually as silent as you are, 
don’t you think you ’re talking a good deal, con- 
sidering how sick you said I was? ” asked the young 
woman, not unmirth fully. 

Guthrie’s square jaws snapped together like a 
trap. “ I was merely trying to detain you,” he 
mumbled, “ until Hanlon had finished knocking the 
3 j 6 


THE PINK SASH 


windows out of your room. We ’re going to give 
you all the air you can breathe, anyway.” 

A little sullenly he started for the stairs. Then 
just at the door he turned unexpectedly and his face 
was all smiles again. 

“ Little Psychology Teacher,” he said, “ I have 
made you a formal, definite offer of marriage. And 
in just about ten minutes from now I am coming 
back for my answer.” 

When he did return a trifle sooner than he had 
intended, he met her in the narrow upper hallway, 
with hands outstretched, groping her way unsteadily 
toward her room. As though her equilibrium was 
altogether disturbed by his sudden advent, she reeled 
back against the wall. 

“ Mr. Donas Guthrie,” she said, “ I ’m feeling 
pretty wobbly ! Mr. Donas Guthrie,” she said, “ I 
guess I ’m pretty sick.” 

“ It ’s a cruel long way down the hall,” sug- 
gested Guthrie. “ Would n’t you like me to carry 
you?” 

“ Yes — I — would,” sighed the Little Psychol- 
ogy Teacher. 

Even to Guthrie’s apprehensive mind, her weight 
proved most astonishingly light. The small head 
drooping limply back from the slender neck seemed 
actually the only heavy thing about her, yet there 
were apparently only two ideas in that head. 

3 J 7 


THE PINK SASH 


“ I ’m afraid of Hanlon’s Mary, and I don’t like 
Dr. Andrews — very — specially — much,” she kept 
repeating aimlessly. Then halfway to her room 
her body stiffened suddenly. 

“ Mr. Donas Guthrie,” she asked. “ Do you 
think I ’m probably going to die ? ” 

“ N-a-w ! ” said Guthrie, his nose fairly crinkling 
with positiveness. 

“ But they don’t give you much of anything to 
eat in typhoid, do they ? ” she persisted hectically. 

“ I suppose not,” acknowledged Guthrie. 

With disconcerting unexpectedness she began to 
cry — a soft, low, whimpery cry like a sleepy 
child’s. 

“If any day should come when — they think — 
that I am going to die,” she moaned, “ who will 
there be to see that I do get — something awfully 
good to eat ? ” 

“ I ’ll see to it,” said Guthrie, “ if you ’ll only put 
me in authority.” 

As though altogether indifferent to anything that 
he might say, her tension relaxed again and with- 
out further parleying she let Guthrie carry her 
across the threshold of her room and set her down 
cautiously in the creaky rocking chain. The eyes 
that lifted to his were as vague and turbid as brown 
velvet. 

“ There ’s one good thing about typhoid,” she 

318 


THE PINK SASH 


moaned. “ It doesn’t seem to hurt any, does it ? 
In fact, I think I rather like it. It feels as warm 
and snug and don’t-care as a hot lemonade at bed 
time. But what? ” brightening suddenly, “ but what 
was it you asked me to think about? I feel sort of 
confused — but it was something, I remember, that 
I was going to argue with you about.” 

“ It was what I said about marrying me,” 
prompted Guthrie. 

“ Oh, y-e-s,” smiled the Little Psychology Teacher. 
Hazily for a moment she continued staring at him 
with her fingers prodded deep into her temples. 
Then suddenly, like a flower blasted with heat, she 
wilted down into her chair, groping blindly out with 
one hand toward the sleeve of his coat. 

“ Whatever you think best to do about it,” she 
faltered, “ I guess you ’d better arrange pretty 
quickly — ’cause I think — I’m — going — out.” 

This is how it happened that Mr. and Mrs. Donas 
Guthrie and Dr. Andrews stayed behind at the 
ranch house with Hanlon and Hanlon’s Mary, and 
a piebald pony or two, and a herd of Angora goats, 
and a pink geranium plant, and the strange inter- 
mittent smell of a New England farmhouse which 
lurked in Hanlon’s goods and chattels even after 
thirty years, and three or four stale, tattered maga- 
zines — and typhoid fever. 

It was typhoid fever that proved essentially the 

3*9 


THE PINK SASH 


most incalculable companion of them all. Hanlon’s 
austerity certainly never varied from day to day, 
nor the inherent sullenness of Hanlon’s Mary. 

The meager sick-room, stripped to its bare pine 
skin of every tawdry colored print and fluttering 
cheese-cloth curtain, faced bluntly toward the west 
— a vital little laboratory in which the unknown 
quantity of a woman’s endurance and the fallible 
skill of one man, the stubborn bravery of another, 
and the quite inestimable will of God were to be 
fused together in a desperate experiment to pre- 
cipitate Life rather than Death. 

So October waxed into November, and so waxed 
misgiving into apprehension, and apprehension into 
actual fear. In any more cheerful situation it 
would have been at least interesting to have watched 
the infuriated expletives issue from Andrew’s 
perennially smiling lips. 

“ Oh, hang not having anything to work with ! ” 
he kept reiterating and reiterating. “ Hang being 
shut off like this on a ranch where there are n’t any- 
thing but sheep and goats and one old stingy cow 
that Hanlon’s Mary guards with her life * cause the 
lady’s only a school teacher, but a baby is a baby.’ 
Hang Hanlon’s Mary! And hang not being alto- 
gether able to blame her! And hang not knowing, 
anyway, just what nanny-goat’s milk would do for 
a typhoid patient ! And hang — ” 

320 


THE PINK SASH 


But before the expletives, and through the ex- 
pletives, and after the expletives, Andrews was all 
hero, working, watching, experimenting, retrench- 
ing, humanly comprehensive, more than humanly 
vigilant. 

So, with the brain of a doctor and the heart of 
a lover, the two men worked and watched and 
waited through the tortuous autumn days and nights, 
blind to the young dawn stealing out like a luminous 
mist from the night-smothered mountains; deaf to 
the flutter of sun-dried leaves in the radiant noon- 
time ; dull to the fruit-scented fragrance of the early 
twilight, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, sensing 
nothing, except the flicker of a pulse or the rise of 
a temperature. 

And then at last there came a harsh, wintry feel- 
ing day, when Andrews, stepping out into the 
hall, called Guthrie softly to him and said, still 
smiling: 

“ Guthrie, old man, I don’t think we ’re going to 
win this game ! ” 

“ W-h-a-t?” gasped Guthrie. 

With his mouth still curling amiably around his 
words, Andrews repeated the phrase. “ I said, I 
don’t think we ’re going to win this game. No, 
nothing new ’s happened. She ’s simply burning 
out. Can’t you understand ? I mean she ’s prob- 
ably — going to die ! ” 

21 


321 


THE PINK SASH 


Out of the jumble of words that hurtled through 
Guthrie’s mind only four slipped his lips. 

“But — she’s — my — wife!” he protested. 

“ Other men’s wives have died before this,” said 
Andrews still smiling. 

“ Man,” cried Guthrie, “ if you smile again, I ’ll 
break your head ! ” 

With his tears running down like rain into the 
broadening trough of his smile, Andrews kept right 
on smiling. “ You need n’t be so cross about it,” 
he said. “ You ’re not the only one who likes her! 
I wanted her myself! You ’re nothing but a tramp 
on the face of the earth — and I could have given 
her the snuggest home in Yonkers ! ” 

With their arms across each other’s shoulders they 
went back into the sick room. 

Rousing from her lethargy, the young woman 
opened her eyes upon them with the first under- 
standing that she had shown for some days. In- 
quisitively she stared from Guthrie’s somber eyes 
to Andrews’ distorted cheerfulness. 

Taking instant advantage of her unwonted ra- 
tionality, Andrews blurted out the question that 
was uppermost in his professional responsibility. 

“ Don’t you think, maybe, your people ought to 
know about your being sick? ” he said. “ Now, if 
you could give us any addresses.” 

For a second it really seemed as though the ques- 
322 


THE PINK SASH 

tion would merely safely ignite her common 
sense. 

“ Why yes, of course,” she acquiesced. “ My 
brother.” 

Then suddenly, without any warning, her most 
dangerous imagination caught fire. 

“ You mean,” she faltered, “ that — I — am — 
not — going to get well ? ” 

Before either man was quick enough to contra- 
dict her, the shock had done its work. Piteously 
she turned her face to the pillow. 

“ Never — never — to — go — to — Oxford ? ” 
she whispered in mournful astonishment. “ Never 
— even — to — see my — Bay of Naples ? — ■ 
Never to — have a — a — perfectly happy Christ- 
mas ? ” A little petulantly then her brain began to 
clog. “ I think I — might at least have had — the 
pink sash ! ” she complained. Then, equally sud- 
denly her strength rallied for an instant and the 
eyes that she lifted to Guthrie’s were filled with a 
desperate effort at raillery. “ Bring on your — an- 
chovies and caviar,” she reminded him, “ and the 
stuffed green peppers — and remember I don’t like 
my fillet too well done — and — ” 

Five minutes later in the hallway Andrews 
caught Guthrie just as he was chasing down-stairs 
after Hanlon. 

“ What are you going to do ? ” he asked curiously. 
323 


THE PINK SASH 


“ I am going to send Hanlon out to the telegraph 
station,” said Guthrie. “ I ’m going to wire to 
Denver for a pink sash ! ” 

“ What she was raving about ? ” quizzed An- 
drews. “ Are you raving too ? ” 

“ It ’s the only blamed thing in the whole world 
that she ’s asked for that I can get her,” said Guth- 
rie. 

“ It ’ll take five days,” growled Andrews. 

“I know it!” 

“ It won’t do her any good.” 

“I can’t help that!” 

“ She ’ll — be gone before it gets here.” 

“ You can’t help that! ” 

But she was n’t “ gone,” at all before it came. 
All her vitalities charred, to be sure, like a fire- 
swept woodland, but still tenacious of life, still 
fighting for reorganization, a little less feverish, a 
little stronger-pulsed, she opened her eyes in a puz- 
zled, sad sort of little smile when Guthrie shook 
the great, broad, shimmering gauze-like ribbon 
ticklingly down across her wasted hands, and then 
apparently drowsed off to sleep again. But when 
both men came back to the room a few moments 
later, almost half the pink sash was cuddled under 
her cheek. And Hanlon’s Mary came and peered 
through the doorway, with the whining baby still 
in her arms, and reaching out and fretting a piece 
324 


THE PINK SASH 

of pink fringe between her hardy fingers, sniffed 
mightily. 

“ And you sent my man all the way to the wire,” 
she asked, “ and grubbed him three whole days 
waitin’ round, just for that?” 

“ Yes, sure,” said Guthrie. 

“ G-a-w-d ! ” said Hanlon’s Mary. 

And, the next week the patient was even better, 
and the next week, better still. Then, one morn- 
ing after days and days of seemingly interminable 
silence and stupor, she opened her eyes perfectly 
wide and asked Guthrie abruptly: 

“ Whom did I marry? You or Dr. Andrews? ” 

And Guthrie in a sudden perversity of shock and 
embarrassment lied grimly: 

“ Dr. Andrews!” 

“ I did n’t either ! — it was you ! ” came the im- 
mediate, not too strong, but distinctly temperish 
response. 

Something in the new vitality of the tone made 
Guthrie stop whatever he was doing and eye her 
suspiciously. 

“ How long have you been conscious like this?” 
he queried in surprise. 

The faintest perceptible flicker of mischief 
crossed her haggard face. 

“ Three — days,” she acknowledged. 

“ Then why — ? ” began Guthrie. 

325 


THE PINK SASH 


“ Because I — did n’t know — just what to call 
you,” she faltered. 

After that no power on earth apparently could 
induce any further speech from her for another 
three days. Solemn and big-eyed and totally un- 
fathomable, she lay watching Guthrie’s every ges- 
ture, every movement. From the door to the chair, 
from the chair to the window, from the window 
back to the chair, she lay estimating him altogether 
disconcertingly. Across the hand that steadied her 
drinking glass, she studied the poise of his lean, firm 
wrist. Out from the shadow-mystery of her heavy 
lashes, she questioned the ultimate value of each 
frown or smile. 

And then, suddenly — just as abruptly as the first 
time she had spoken: 

“ What day is it ? ” she asked. 

“ It ’s Christmas,” said Guthrie softly. 

“ O-h ! — O-h ! — O-h ! ” she exclaimed, very 
slowly. Then with increasing interest and wonder, 
“ Is there snow on the ground ? ” she whispered. 

“ No,” said Guthrie. 

“ Is it full moon to-night? ” she questioned. 

“ No,” said Guthrie. 

“ Is there any small, freckle-faced, alto-voiced 
choir boy in the house, trotting around humming 
funny little tail-ends of anthems and carols, while 
he ’s buckling up his skates? ” she stammered. 

326 


THE PINK SASH 


“ No,” said Guthrie. 

“ Are there any old, white-haired loving people 
cuddled in the chimney corner?” she persisted. 

“ No,” said Guthrie. 

“ Is n’t there — any Christmas tree? ” 

“ No.” 

“Aren’t there even any presents?” 

“ No.” 

“ Oh ! ” she smiled. “ Is n’t it funny ! ” 

“ What ’s funny ? ” asked Guthrie perplexedly. 

The eyes that lifted to his were brimming full of 
a strange, wistful sort of astonishment. “ Why, 
it ’s funny,” she faltered, “ it ’s funny — that with- 
out — any of these things — that I thought were so 
necessary to it — I ’ve found my ‘ perfectly happy 
Christmas.’ ” 

Then, almost bashfully, her wisp-like fingers 
went straying out toward the soft silken folds of 
the precious pink sash which she kept always close 
to her pillow. 

“If — you — don’t — mind,” she said, “I 
think I ’ll cut my sash in two and give half of it 
to Hanlon’s Mary to make a dress for her baby.” 

The medicine spoon dropped rather clatteringly 
out of Guthrie’s hand. 

“ But I sent all the way to Denver for it,” he 
protested. 

“ Oh, yes, I know all about that,” she acknowl- 
327 


THE PINK SASH 


edged. “ But — what — can — a great big girl — 
like me — do with a — pink sash ? ” 

“But you said you wanted it!” cried Guthrie. 
“ Why, it took a man and a pony and a telegraph 
station five entire days to get it, and they had to 
flag the express train specially for it — and — 
and — ” 

A little wearily she closed her eyes and then 
opened them again blinkingly. 

“ I ’m pretty tired, now,” she said, “ so I don’t 
want to talk about it — but don’t you — under- 
stand? I’ve revised my whole list of necessities. 
Out of the wide — wide — world — I find that I 
don’t really want anything — except — just — 
you!” 


WOMAN’S ONLY BUSINESS 



WOMAN’S ONLY BUSINESS 


HE men at the club were horridly 
busy that night discussing the 
silly English law about marrying 
your dead wife’s sister. The talk 
was quite rabid enough even be- 
fore an English High-churchman 

infused his pious venom into the subject-matter. 
When the argument was at its highest and the 
drinks were at their lowest, Bertus Sagner, the 
biology man at the university, jumped up from his 
seat with blazing eyes and said “ rats ! ” — not any- 
thing long and Latin, not anything obscure and 
evasive, not even “ rodents,” but just plain 
“ rats ! ” The look on his face was inordinately 

disgusted, or indeed more than disgusted, unless 

disgust is perhaps an emotion that may at times 
be served red-hot. As he broke away from the 
gabbling crowd and began to hunt noisily round 
the room for his papers, I gathered up my own 
chemistry notebook and started after him. I was a 
new man in town and a comparative stranger. But 
33i 



WOMAN’S ONLY BUSINESS 

Sagner and I had been chums once long ago in 
Berlin. 

At the outside door he turned now and eyed me 
a bit shamefacedly. “ Barney, old man,” he said, 
“are you going my way? Well, come along.” 
The broad-shouldered breadth of the two of us 
blocked out the light from the shining chandelier 
and sent our clumsy feet fairly stumbling down the 
harsh granite steps. The jarring lurch exploded 
Sagner’s irritation into a short, sharp, damny growl, 
and I saw at once that his nerves were raw like a 
woman’s. 

As we turned into the deep-shadowed, spooky- 
black college roadway, the dormitories’ yellow 
lights and laughter flared forth grotesquely like the 
Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge cut up for a Jack- 
o’-Lantern. At the edge of the Lombardy pop- 
lars I heard Sagner swallowing a little bit over- 
hard. 

“ I suspect that I made rather a fool of myself 
back there,” he confided abruptly, “ but if there ’s 
anything under the day or night sky that makes me 
mad, it ’s the idiotic babble, babble, babble, these 
past few weeks about the ‘ dead wife’s sister ’ law.” 

“What’s your grouch?” I asked. “You’re 
not even a married man, let alone a widower.” 

He stopped suddenly with a spurting match and 
a big cigar and lighted up unconsciously all the ex- 
33 ^ 


WOMAN’S ONLY BUSINESS 


traordinary frowning furrows of his face. The 
match went out and he struck another, and that 
match went out and he struck another — and an- 
other, and all the time it seemed to me as though 
just the flame in his face was hot enough to kindle 
any ordinary cigar. After each fruitless, breeze- 
snuffed effort he snapped his words out like so 
many tiny, tempery torpedoes. “ Of — all — the 

— rot ! ” he ejaculated. “Of — all — the non- 
sense ! ” he puffed and mumbled. “A — whole — 
great, grown-up empire fussing and brawling about 
a 4 dead wife’s sister.’ A dead wife! What does 
a dead wife care who marries her sister? Great 
heavens ! If they really want to make a good moral 
law that will help somebody, why — don’t — they 

— make — a — law — that will forbid a man’s 
flirting with his living wife’s sister?” 

When I laughed I thought he would strike me, 
but after a husky second he laughed, too, through 
a great blue puff of smoke and a blaze like the 
headlight of an engine. In another instant he had 
vaulted the low fence and was starting off across 
lots for his own rooms, but before I could catch 
up with him he whirled abruptly in his tracks and 
came back to me. 

“ Will you come over to the Lennarts’ with me 
for a moment?” he asked. “I was there at din- 
ner with them to-night and I left my spectacles.” 
333 


WOMAN’S ONLY BUSINESS 


Very willingly I acquiesced, and we plunged off 
single file into the particular darkness that led to 
Professor Lennart’s rose-garden. Somewhere re- 
motely in my mind hummed and halted a vague, 
evasive bit of man-gossip about Lennart’s amaz- 
ingly pretty sister-in-law. Yet Sagner did not look 
exactly to me like a man who was going courting. 
Even in that murky darkness I could visualize per- 
fectly from Sagner’s pose and gait the same strange, 
bleak, facial furnishings that had attracted me so 
astoundingly in Berlin — the lean, flat cheeks 
cleaned close as the floor of a laboratory; the ugly, 
short-cropped hair; the mouth, just for work; the 
nose, just for work; the ears, just for work — not 
a single, decorative, pleasant thing from crown to 
chin except those great, dark, gorgeous, miracu- 
lously virgin eyes, with the huge, shaggy eyebrows 
lowering down prudishly over them like two com- 
mon doormats on which every incoming vision must 
first stop and wipe its feet. Once in a cafe in 
Berlin I saw a woman try to get into Sagner’s 
eyes — without stopping. Right in the middle of 
our dinner I jumped as though I had been shot. 
“ Why, what was that ?” I cried. “What was 
that?” 

“ What was what ? ” drawled Sagner. Try as 
I might the tiniest flicker of a grin tickled my lips. 
“ Oh, nothing,” I mumbled apologetically. “ I just 
334 


WOMAN’S ONLY BUSINESS 

thought I heard a door slam-bang in a woman’s 
face.” 

“ What door?” said Sagner stupidly. “What 
woman ? ” 

Old Sagner was deliciously stupid over many 
things, but he dissected the darkness toward Pro- 
fessor Lennart’s house as though it had been his 
favorite kind of cadaver. Here, was the hardening 
turf, compact as flesh. There, was the tough, tight 
tendon of the ripping ground pine. Farther along 
under an exploring match a great vapid peony 
loomed like a dead heart. Somewhere out in an 
orchard the May-blooms smelled altogether too 
white. Almost at the edge of the Lennarts’ piazza 
he turned and stepped back to my pace and began 
talking messily about some stale biological specimen 
that had just arrived from the Azores. 

College people, it seemed, did not ring bells for 
one another, and the most casual flop of Sagner’s 
knuckles against the door brought Mrs. Lennart al- 
most immediately to welcome us. “ Almost imme- 
diately,” I say, because the slight, faltering delay in 
her footfall made me wonder even then whether it 
was limb or life that had gone just a little bit lame. 
But the instant the hall light struck her face my 
hand clutched down involuntarily on Sagner’s 
shoulder. It was the same, same face whose 
brighter, keener, shinier pastelled likeness had been 
335 


WOMAN’S ONLY BUSINESS 


the only joyous object in Sagner’s homesick Ger- 
man room. With almost embarrassing slowness 
now we followed her lagging steps back to the 
library. 

It was the first American home that I had seen 
for some years, and the warmth of it, and the 
color, and the glow, and the luxurious, deep-seated 
comfort, mothered me like the notes of an old, old 
song. Between the hill-green walls the long room 
stretched like a peaceful valley to the very edge of 
the huge, gray field-stone fireplace that blocked the 
final vista like a furious breastwork raised against 
all the invading tribes of history. Red books and 
gold frames and a chocolate-colored bronze or two 
caught up the flickering glint from the apple-wood 
fire, and out of some shadowy corner flanked by 
a grand piano a young girl’s contralto voice, 
sensuous as liquid plush, was lipping its magic way 
up and down the whole wonderful, molten scale. 

The corner was rather small, but out of it loomed 
instantly the tall, supple figure of Professor Len- 
nart with his thousand-year-old brown eyes and his 
young gray hair. We were all big fellows, but 
Lennart towered easily three inches over anybody 
else’s head. Professionally, too, he had out- 
stripped the rest of us. People came gadding from 
all over the country to consult his historical criti- 
cisms and interpretations. And I hardly know how 

336 


WOMAN’S ONLY BUSINESS 


to express the man’s vivid, luminous, incandescent 
personality. Surely no mother in a thousand would 
have chosen to have her son look like me, and I 
hope that no mother in a million would really have 
yearned to have a boy look like Sagner, but any 
mother, I think, would gladly have compromised 
on Lennart. I suppose he was handsome. Rising 
now, as he did, from the murkiest sort of a shadow, 
the mental and physical radiance of him made me 
want to laugh right out loud just for sheer pleas- 
ure. 

Following closely behind his towering bulk, the 
girl with the contralto voice stepped out into the 
lamplight, and I made my most solemn and pro- 
found German bow over her proffered hand before 
the flaming mischief in her finger tips sent my eyes 
staring up into her astonishing face. 

I have never thought that American women are 
extraordinarily beautiful, but rather that they wear 
their beauty like a thinnish sort of veil across the 
adorable, insistent expressiveness of their features. 
But this girl’s face was so thick with beauty that 
you could not tell in one glance, or even two glances, 
or perhaps three, whether she had any expression 
at all. Kindness or meanness, brightness or dull- 
ness, pluck or timidity, were absolutely unde- 
cipherable in that physically perfect countenance. 
She was very small, and very dark, and very active, 
22 337 


WOMAN'S ONLY BUSINESS 


with hair like the color of eight o’clock — daylight 
and darkness and lamplight all snarled up together 
— and lips all crude scarlet, and eyes as absurdly 
big and round as a child’s good-by kiss. Yet never 
for one instant could you have called her anything 
so impassive as “ attractive.” “ Attracting ” is the 
only hasty, ready-made word that could possibly fit 
her. Personally I do not like the type. The pret- 
tiest picture postal that ever was printed could not 
lure me across the borders of any unknown coun- 
try. When I travel even into Friendship Land I 
want a good, clear face-map to guide my explora- 
tions. 

There was a boy, too, in the room — the Len- 
narts’ son — a brown-faced lad of thirteen whose 
algebraic seance with his beloved mother we had 
most brutally interrupted. 

Professor Lennart’s fad, as I have said, was his- 
tory. Mrs. Lennart’s fad was presumably house- 
keeping. The sister-in-law’s fad was unmistakably 
men. Like an electric signboard her fascinating, 
spectacular sex-vanity flamed and flared from her 
coyly drooped eyes to her showy little feet. Every 
individual gesture signaled distinctly, “ I am an 
extraordinarily beautiful little woman.” Now it 
was her caressing hand on Lennart’s shoulder ; now 
it was her maddening, dazzling smile hurled like a 
bombshell into Sagner’s perfectly prosy remark 

338 


WOMAN’S ONLY BUSINESS 


about the weather, now it was her teasing lips 
against the boy’s tousled hair; now it was her tip- 
toeing, swaying, sweet-breathed exploration of a 
cobweb that the linden trees had left across my 
shoulder. 

Lennart was evidently utterly subjugated. Like 
a bright moth and a very dull flame the girl chased 
him unceasingly from one chair, or one word, or 
one laugh to another. A dozen times their hands 
touched, or their smiles met, or their thoughts mated 
in distinctly personal if not secret understanding. 
Once when Mrs. Lennart stopped suddenly in the 
midst of my best story and asked me to repeat what 
I had been saying, I glanced up covertly and saw 
the girl kissing the tip of her finger a little bit over- 
mockingly to her brother-in-law. Never in any 
country but America could such a whole scene have 
been enacted in absolute moral innocence. It made 
me half ashamed and half very proud of my coun- 
try. In continental Europe even the most trivial, 
innocent audacity assumes at once such utterly pre- 
posterous proportions of evil. But here before my 
very eyes was the most dangerous man-and-woman 
game in the world being played as frankly and in- 
genuously and transiently as though it had been 
croquet. 

Through it all, Sagner, frowning like ten devils, 
sat at the desk with his chin in his hands, staring — 
339 


WOMAN’S ONLY BUSINESS 


staring at the girl. I suppose that she thought he 
was fascinated. He was. He was fairly yearning 
to vivisect her. I had seen that expression before 
in his face — reverence, repulsion, attraction, dis- 
taste, indomitable purpose, blood-curdling curiosity 
— SCIENCE. 

When I dragged him out of the room and down 
the steps half an hour later my sides were cramped 
with laughter. “ If we ’d stayed ten minutes 
longer,” I chuckled, “ she would have called you 
‘ Bertie ’ and me ‘ Boy.’ ” 

But Sagner would not laugh. 

“ She ’s a pretty girl all right,” I ventured again. 

“ Pretty as h — whispered Sagner. 

As we rounded the corner of the house the long 
French window blazed forth on us. Clear and 
bright in the lamplight stood Lennart with his right 
arm cuddling the girl to his side. “ Little sister,” 
he was saying, “ let’s go back to the piano and have 
some more music.” Smiling her kindly good night 
we saw Mrs. Lennart gather up her books and start 
off limpingly across the hall, with the devoted boy 
following close behind her. 

“ Then she ’s really lame ? ” I asked Sagner as 
we swung into the noisy gravel path. 

“ Oh, yes,” he said ; “ she got hurt in a runaway 
accident four years ago. Lennart doesn’t know 
how to drive a goatl” 


340 


WOMAN’S ONLY BUSINESS 


“ Seems sort of too bad,” I mused dully. 

Then Sagner laughed most astonishingly. “ Yes, 
sort of too bad,” he mocked me. 

It was almost ten o’clock when we circled back 
to the college library. Only a few grinds were 
there buzzing like June-bugs round the low-swing- 
ing green lamps. Even the librarian was missing. 
But Madge Hubert, the librarian’s daughter, was 
keeping office hours in his stead behind a sumptuous 
old mahogany desk. At the very first college party 
that I had attended, Madge Hubert had been pointed 
out to me with a certain distinction as being the 
girl that Bertus Sagner was almost in love with. 
Then, as now, I was startled by the surprising 
youthfulness of her. Surely she was not more than 
three years ahead of the young girl whom we had 
left at Professor Lennart’s house. With unmis- 
takable friendly gladness she welcomed Sagner to 
the seat nearest her, and accorded me quite as much 
chair and quite as much smile as any new man in 
a university town really deserved. In another mo- 
ment she had closed her book, pushed a full box of 
matches across the table to us, and switched off the 
electric light that fairly threatened to scorch her 
straight blond hair. 

One by one the grinds looked up and nodded and 
smiled, and puckered their vision toward the clock, 
and “ folded their tents like the Arabs and silently 
34i 


WOMAN’S ONLY BUSINESS 

stole away,” leaving us two men there all alone with 
the great silent room, and the long, rangy, echoing 
metal book-stacks, and the duddy-looking portraits, 
and the dopy-acting busts, and the sleek gray library 
cat — and the girl. Maybe Sagner came every 
Wednesday night to help close the library. 

Certainly I liked the frank, almost boyish man- 
ner in which the two friends included me in their 
friendship by seeming to ignore me altogether. 

“What’s the matter, Bertus?” the girl began 
quite abruptly. “ You look worried. What ’s the 
matter ? ” 

“ Nothing is ever the matter,” said Sagner. 

The girl laughed, and began to build a high, tot- 
tering paper tower out of a learned-looking pack of 
catalogue cards. Just at the moment of completion 
she gave a sharp little inadvertent sigh and the 
tower fluttered down. 

“ What ’s the matter with you ? ” quizzed Sagner. 

“ Nothing is ever the matter with me, either,” she 
mocked smilingly. 

Trying to butt into the silence that was awkward 
for me, if not for them, I rummaged my brain for 
speech, and blurted out triumphantly, “We ’ve just 
come from Professor Lennart’s.” 

“Just come from Professor Lennart’s?” she re- 
peated slowly, lifting her eyebrows as though the 
thought was a little bit heavy. 

342 


WOMAN’S ONLY BUSINESS 


“ Yes,” said Sagner bluntly. “ I ’ve been there 
twice this evening.” 

With a rather playful twist of her lips the girl 
turned to me. “ What did you think of ‘ Little Sis- 
ter ’ ? ” she asked. 

But before I could answer, Sagner had pushed 
me utterly aside once more and was shaking his 
smoke-stained finger threateningly in Madge Hu- 
bert’s face. “ Why — did n’t — you — come — to 
the — Lennarts’ — to — dinner — to-night — as — 
you — were — invited? ” he scolded. 

The girl put her chin in her hand and cuddled her 
fingers over her mouth and her nose and part of 
her blue eyes. 

“ I don’t go to the Lennarts’ any more — if I can 
help it,” she mumbled. 

“ Why not ? ” shouted Sagner. 

She considered the question very carefully, then 
“ Go ask the other girls,” she answered a trifle 
hotly. “ Go ask any one of them. We all stay 
away for exactly the same reason.” 

“What is the reason?” thundered Sagner in 
his most terrible laboratory manner. 

When Sagner speaks like that to me, I always 
grab hold of my head with both hands and answer 
just as fast as I possibly can, for I remember only 
too distinctly all the shining assortment of different 
sized knives and scalpels in his workshop and I have 
343 


WOMAN’S ONLY BUSINESS 


always found that a small, narrow, quick question 
makes the smallest, narrowest, quickest, soon-over- 
est incision into my secret. 

But Madge Hubert only laughed at the laboratory 
manner. 

“ Say * Please,’ ” she whispered. 

“ Please ! ” growled Sagner, with his very own 
blood flushing all over his face and hands. 

“ Now — what is it you want to know ? ” she 
asked, frittering her fingers all the time over that 
inky-looking pack of catalogue cards. 

Somehow, strange as it may seem, I did not feel 
an atom in the way, but rather that the presence 
of a third person, and that person myself, gave 
them both a certain daring bravado of speech that 
they would scarcely have risked alone with each 
other. 

“ What do I want to know ? ” queried Sagner. 
“ I want to know — in fact — I’m utterly mad to 
know — just what your kind of woman thinks of 
‘ Little Sister’s ’ kind of woman.” 

With a startled gesture Madge Hubert looked back 
over her shoulder toward a creak in the literature 
book-stack, and Sagner jumped up with a great air 
of mock conspiracy, and went tip- toeing all around 
among the metal corridors in search of possible 
eavesdroppers, and then came flouncing back and 
stuffed tickly tissue paper into the gray cat’s ears. 
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Then “ Why don’t you girls go to the Lennarts' 
any more ? ” he resumed with quickly recurrent 
gravity. 

For a moment Madge Hubert dallied to shuffle 
one half of her pack of cards into the other half. 
Then she looked up and smiled the blond way a 
white-birch tree smiles in the sunshine. 

“ Why — we don’t go any more because we don’t 
have a good time,” she confided. “ After you ’ve 
come home from a party once or twice and cried 
yourself to sleep, it begins to dawn on you very 
gradually that you did n’t have a very good time. 
We don’t like ‘ Little Sister.’ She makes us feel 
ashamed.” 

“ Oh! ” said Sagner, rather brutally. “ You are 
all jealous ! ” 

But if he had expected for a second to disconcert 
Madge Hubert he was most ingloriously mistaken. 

“ Yes,” she answered perfectly simply. “ We 
are all jealous.” 

“Of her beauty?” scowled Sagner. 

“ Oh, no,” said Madge Hubert. “ Of her inno- 
cence.” 

Acid could n’t have eaten the* fiber out of Madge 
Hubert’s emotional honesty. “ Why, yes,” she 
hurried on vehemently, “ among all the professors' 
daughters here in town there is n’t one of us who is 
innocent enough to do happily even once the things 
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that ‘ Little Sister 5 does every day of her life. 
You are quite right. We are all furiously jeal- 
ous.” 

With sudden professional earnestness she ran her 
fingers through the catalogue cards and picked out 
one and slapped it down in front of Sagner. 
“ There ! ” she said. “ That ’s the book that ex- 
plains all about it. It says that jealousy is an emo- 
tion that is aroused only by business competition, 
which accounts, of course, for the fact that, socially 
speaking, you very rarely find any personal enmity 
between men. There are so many, many different 
kinds of businesses for men, that interests very 
seldom conflict — so that the broker resents only 
the broker, and the minister resents only the min- 
ister, and the merchant resents only the merchant. 
Why, Bertus Sagner,” she broke off abruptly, “ you 
fairly idolize your chemistry friend here, and Len- 
nart for history, and Dudley for mathematics, and 
all the others, and you glory in their achievements, 
and pray for their successes. But if there were 
another biology man here in town, you ’d tear him 
and his methods tooth and nail, day and night. 
Yes, you would! — though you’d cover your hate 
a foot deep with superficial courtesies and * pro- 
fessional etiquette.’ ” 

She began to laugh. “ Oh, the book is very 
wise,” she continued more lightly. “ It goes on to 
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say that woman’s only business in the whole 
wide world is love — that Love is really the one 
and only, the Universal Profession for Women — 
so that every mortal feminine creature, from the 
brownest gypsy to the whitest queen, is in brutal, 
acute competition with her neighbor. It ’s funny, 
is n’t it ! ” she finished brightly. 

“ Very funny,” growled Sagner. 

“ So you see,” she persisted, “ that we girls are 
jealous of ‘ Little Sister ’ in just about the same 
way in which an old-fashioned, rather conservative 
department store would be jealous of the first ten- 
cent store that came to town.” A sudden rather 
fine white pride paled suddenly in her cheeks. “ It 
is n’t, you understand,” she said, “ it is n’t be- 
cause the ten-cent store’s rhinestone comb, or 
tinsel ribbon, or slightly handled collar really 
competes with the other store’s plainer but possibly 
honester values, but — because in the long run 
the public’s frittered taste and frittered small 
change is absolutely bound to affect the general re- 
ceipts of the more conservative store.” 

“ And it is n’t,” she added hastily, “ it is n’t, 
you know, because we ’re not used to men. There 
is n’t one of us — from the time we were six- 
teen years old — who has n’t been quite accus- 
tomed to entertain anywhere from three to a 
dozen men every evening of her life. But we 
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can’t entertain them the way ‘ Little Sister ’ does.” 
A hot, red wave of mortification flooded her face. 
“ We tried it once,” she confessed, “ and it did n’t 
work. Just before the last winter party seven of 
us girls got together and deliberately made up our 
minds to beat ‘ Little Sister ’ at her own game. 
Was n’t it disgusting of us to start out actually and 
deliberately with the intention of being just a little 
wee bit free and easy with men ? ” 

“How did it work?” persisted Sagner, half a- 
grin. 

The color flushed redder and redder into Madge 
Hubert’s cheeks. 

“ I went to the party with the new psychology 
substitute,” she continued bravely, “ and as I stepped 
into the carriage I called him ‘ Fred ’ — and he 
looked as though he thought I was demented. But 
fifteen minutes afterward I heard ‘ Little Sister ’ 
call him ‘ Psyche ’ — and he laughed.” She began 
to laugh herself. 

“ But how did the party come out? ” probed Sag- 
ner, going deeper and deeper. 

The girl sobered instantly. “ There were seven 
of us,” she said, “ and we all were to meet at the 
house of one of the girls at twelve o’clock and com- 
pare experiences. Three of us came home at ten 
o’clock — crying. And four of us did n’t turn up 
till half-past one — laughing. But the ones who 
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came home crying were the only ones who really 
had any fun out of it. The game was altogether 
too easy — that was the trouble with it. But the 
four who came home laughing had been bored to 
death with their ww-successes.” 

“Which lot were you in?” cried Sagner. 

She shook her head. “ I won’t tell you,” she 
whispered. 

With almost startling pluck she jumped up sud- 
denly and switched the electric light full blast into 
her tense young face and across her resolute shoul- 
ders. 

“ Look at me ! ” she cried. “ Look at me ! As 
long as men are men — what have I that can pos- 
sibly, possibly compete with a girl like ‘ Little Sis- 
ter ’ ? Can I climb up into a man’s face every time 
I want to speak to him ? Can I pat a man’s shoul- 
der every time he passes me in a room? Can I 
hold out my quivering white hand and act perfectly 
helpless in a man’s presence every time that I want 
to step into a carriage, or out of a chair? Can I 
cry and grieve and mope into a man’s arms at a 
dance just because I happen to cut my finger on 
the sharp edge of my dance-order? Bah! If a 
new man came to town and made not one single 
man- friend but called all of us girls by our first 
names the second time he saw us, and rolled his 
eyes at us, and fluttered his hands, you people would 
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call him the biggest fool in Christendom — but you 
flock by the dozens and the hundreds and the mil- 
lions every evening to see ‘ Little Sister.’ And 
great, grown-up, middle-aged boys like you , Bertus 
Sagner, flock twice in the same evening ! ” 

With astounding irrelevance Sagner burst out 
laughing. “ Why, Madge,” he cried, “ you ’re per- 
fectly superb when you ’re mad. Keep it up. 
Keep it up. I did n’t know you had it in you ! 
Why, you dear, gorgeous girl — why aren’t you 

MARRIED ? ” 

Like a scarlet lightning-bolt spiked with two- 
edged knives the red wrath of the girl de- 
scended then and there on Sagner’s ugly head. 
With her heaving young shoulders braced like a 
frenzied creature at bay, against a great, silly, 
towering tier of “ Latest Novels,” she hurled her 
flaming, irrevocable answer crash-bang into Sag- 
ner’s astonished, impertinent face. 

“You want to know why I’m not married?” 
she cried. “ You want to know why I ’m not mar- 
ried ? Well, I ’ll tell you — why — I’m — not 
married, Bertus Sagner, and I ’ll use yourself for an 
illustration — for when I do come to marry, it is 
written in the stars that I must of necessity marry 
your kind, a mature, cool, calculating, emotionally- 
tamed man, a man of brain as well as brawn, a 
man of fame if not of fortune, a man bred intel- 
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lectually, morally, socially, into the same wonder- 
fully keen, thinky corner of the world where I was 
born — nothing but a woman. 

“ For four years, Bertus Sagner, ever since I 
was nineteen years old, people have come stumbling 
over each other at college receptions to stare at me 
because I am 4 the girl that Bertus Sagner, the big 
biologist, is almost in love with.’ And you are 
‘ almost ’ in love with me, Bertus Sagner. You 
can’t deny it! And what is more, you will stay 
‘ almost ’ in love with me till our pulses run down 
like clocks, and our eyes burn out like lamps, and 
the Real Night comes. If I remain here in this 
town, even when I am middle-aged — people will 
come and stare at me — because of you. And 
when I am old, and you are gone — altogether, 
people will still be talking about it. ‘ Almost in 
love ’ with me. Yes, Bertus Sagner, but if next 
time you came to see me, I should even so much as 
dally for a second on the arm of your chair, and 
slip my hand just a little bit tremulously into yours, 
and brush my lips like the ghost of a butterfly’s 
wing across your love-starved face, you would 
probably find out then and there in one great, blind- 
ing, tingling, crunching flash that you love me 
now! But I don’t want you, Bertus Sagner, nor 
any other man, at that price. The man who 
was made for me will love me first and get his 
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petting afterward. There! Do you understand 
now? ” 

As though Sagner’s gasp for breath was no more 
than the flutter of a book-leaf, she plunged on, 
“ And as for Mrs. Lennart — ” 

Sagner jumped to his feet. “ We were n’t talk- 
ing about Mrs. Lennart,” he exclaimed hotly. 

It has always seemed to me that very few things 
in the world are as quick as a woman’s anger. But 
nothing in the world, I am perfectly positive, is 
as quick as a woman’s amusement. As though an 
anarchist’s bomb had exploded into confetti, Madge 
Hubert’s sudden laughter sparkled through the 
room. 

“ Now, Bertus Sagner,” she teased, “ you just 
sit down again and listen to what I have to say.” 

Sagner sat down. 

And as casually as though she were going to pour 
afternoon tea the girl slipped back into her own 
chair, and gave me a genuinely mirthful side-glance 
before she resumed her attack on Sagner. 

“ You were, too, talking about Mrs. Lennart,” 
she insisted. “ When you asked me to tell you 
exactly what a girl of my kind thinks of a girl like 
4 Little Sister,’ do you suppose for a second I didn’t 
understand that the thing you really wanted to find 
out was whether Mrs. Lennart was getting hurt 
or not in this * Little Sister ’ business ? Oh, no, 
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Mrs. Lennart has n’t been hurt for a long, long 
time — several months perhaps. I think she looks 
a little bit bored now and then, but not hurt.” 

“ Lennart ’s a splendid fellow,” protested Sag- 
ner. 

“ He ’s a splendid fool,” said Madge Hubert. 
“ And after a woman once discovers that her hus- 
band is a fool I don’t suppose that any extra illus- 
trations on his part make any particular difference 
to her.” 

“ Why, you don’t — really think,” stammered 
Sagner, “ that there ’s any actual harm in Lennart’s 
perfectly frank infatuation with ‘ Little Sister ’ ? ” 

“ Oh, no,” said Madge Hubert, “of course there ’s 
no real harm in it at all. It ’s only that Mrs. Len- 
nart has got to realize once for all that the special 
public that she has catered to so long and faithfully 
with honest values and small profit, has really got 
a ten-cent taste ! Most men have. And it is n’t, 
you know, because Professor Lennart really wants 
or needs all these ten-cent toys and favors, but be- 
cause he probably never before in all his studious, 
straight, idealistic life saw glittering nonsense so 
inordinately cheap and easy to get. Talk about 
women being ‘ bargain-hunters ’ ! 

“ But, of course, it ’s all pretty apt to ruin Mrs. 
Lennart’s business. Anybody with half a heart 
could see that her stock is beginning to run down. 
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She has n't put in a new idea for months. She 's 
wearing last year’s clothes. She 's thinking last 
year’s thoughts. Even that blessed smile of hers 
is beginning to get just a little bit stale. You can’t 
get what you want from her any more. Dust and 
indifference have already begun to set in. How 
will it end ? Oh, I '11 tell you how it will end. 
Pretty soon now college will be over and the men 
will scatter in five hundred different directions, and 
‘ Little Sister ' will be smitten suddenly with con- 
scientious scruples about the ‘ old folks at home,' 
and will pack up her ruffles and her fraternity pins 
and go back to the provincial little town that has 
made her what she is. And Professor Lennart will 
mope around the house like a lost soul — for as 
much as five days — moaning, ‘ Oh, I wish “ Little 
Sister ” was here to-night to sing to me,’ and ‘ I 
wish “ Little Sister ” was going to be here to-mor- 
row to go canoeing with me,’ and ‘ I wish “ Little 
Sister ” could see this moonlight,’ and ‘ I wish “ Lit- 
tle Sister ” could taste this wild-strawberry pie.’ 
And then somewhere about the sixth day, when he 
and Mrs. Lennart are at breakfast or dinner or 
supper, he ’ll look up suddenly like a man just freed 
from a delirium, and drop his cup, or his knife, or 
his fork 4 ker-smash ’ into his plate, and cry out, 
‘ My Heavens, Mary ! But it 's pretty good just for 
you and me to be alone together again ! ’ ” 

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“ And what will Mrs. Lennart say?” interposed 
Sagner hastily, with a great puff of smoke. 

For some unaccountable reason Madge Hubert’s 
eyes slopped right over with tears. 

“ What will Mary Lennart say ? ” she repeated. 
“ Mary Lennart will say : ‘ Excuse me, dear, but 

I was n’t listening. I did n’t hear what you said. 
I was trying to remember whether or not I ’d put 
moth-balls in your winter suit.’ Though he live to 
be nine hundred and sixty-two, Harold Lennart’s 
love-life will never rhyme again. But prose, of 
course, is a great deal easier to live than verse.” 

As though we had all been discussing the latest 
foreign theory concerning microbes, Sagner jumped 
up abruptly and began to rummage furiously 
through a pile of German bulletins. When he had 
found and read aloud enough things that he didn’t 
want, he looked up and said nonchalantly, “ Let ’s 
go home.” 

“ All right,” said Madge Hubert. 

“ Maybe you had n’t noticed that I was here,” I 
suggested, “ but I think that perhaps I should like 
to go home, too.” 

As we banged the big, oaken, iron-clamped door 
behind us, Madge Hubert lingered a second and 
turned her white face up to the waning, yellow 
moonlight. “ I think I ’d like to go home through 
the dark woods,” she decided. 

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Silently we all turned down into the soft, padded 
path that ran along the piny shore of our little 
college lake. Sagner of course led the way. 
Madge Hubert followed close. And I tagged along 
behind as merrily as I could. Twice I saw the girl’s 
shoulders shudder. 

“Don’t you like the woods, Miss Hubert?” I 
called out experimentally. 

She stopped at once and waited for me to catch 
up with her. There was the very faintest possible 
suggestion of timidity in the action. 

“Don’t you like the woods?” I repeated. 

She shook her head. “ No, not especially,” she 
answered. “ That is, not all woods. There ’s such 
a difference. Some woods feel as though they had 
violets in them, and some woods feel as though they 
had — Indians.” 

I could n’t help laughing. “ How about these 
woods ? ” I quizzed. 

She gave a little gasp. “ I don’t believe there 
are violets in any woods to-night,” she faltered. 

Even as she spoke we heard a swish and a crackle 
ahead of us and Sagner came running back. 
“ Let ’s go round the other way,” he insisted. 

“ I won’t go round the other way,” said Madge 
Hubert. “ How perfectly absurd ! What ’s the 
matter ? ” 

Even as she argued we stepped out into the open 

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clearing and met Harold Lennart and “ Little Sis- 
ter ” singing their way home hand in hand through 
the witching night For an instant our jovial greet- 
ings parried together, and then we passed. Not till 
we had reached Madge Hubert’s doorstep did I 
lose utterly the wonderful lilting echo of that 
young contralto voice with the man’s older tenor 
ringing in and out of it like a shimmery silver 
lining. 

Ten minutes later in Sagner’s cluttered workroom 
we two men sat and stared through our pipe-smoke 
into each other’s evasive eyes. 

“ Madge did n’t — hesitate at all — to tell me 
a thing or two to-night, did she ? ” Sagner began 
at last, gruffly. 

I smiled. The relaxation made me feel as though 
my mouth had really got a chance at last to sit 
down. 

“ Am I so very old ? ” persisted Sagner. “ I ’m 
not forty-five.” 

I shrugged my shoulders. 

Pettishly he reached out and clutched at a scal- 
pel, cleansed it for an instant in the flame, and 
jabbed the point of it into his wrist. The red blood 
spurted instantly. 

“ There ! ” he cried out triumphantly. “ I have 
blood in me ! It is n’t embalming fluid at all.” 

“ Oh, quit your fooling, you old death-digger,” I 

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said. And then with overtense impulse I asked, 
“ Sagner, man, do you really understand Life? ” 

Sagner’s jaw-bones stiffened instantly. “ Oh, 
yes,” he exclaimed. “ Oh, yes, of course I under- 
stand Life. That is,” he added, with a most un- 
usual burst of humility, “ I understand everything, 
I think, except just why the gills of a fish — but, 
oh, bother, you would n’t know what I meant ; and 
there ’s a new French theory about odylic forces 
that puzzles me a little, and I never, never have 
been able to understand the particular mental 
processes of a woman who violates the law of 
species by naming her firstborn son for any man 
but his father. I ’m not exactly criticising the fish,” 
he added vehemently, “ nor the new odylic theory, 
nor even the woman ; I ’m simply stating baldly and 
plainly the only three things under God’s heaven 
that I can’t quite seem to fathom.” 

“ What ’s all this got to do with Mary Lennart ? ” 
I asked impatiently. 

“ Nothing at all to do with Mary Lennart,” he 
answered proudly. “ Mary Lennart’s son is named 
Harold.” He began to smoke very hard. “ Con- 
sidering the real object of our being put here in the 
world,” he resumed didactically, “ it has always 
seemed to me that the supreme test of character lay 
in the father’s and mother’s mental attitude toward 
their young.” 


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“ Could n’t you say < toward their children ’ ? ” I 
protested. 

He brushed my interruption aside. “ I don’t 
care,” he persisted, “ how much a man loves a 
woman or how much a woman loves a man — the 
man who deserts his wife during her crucial hour 
and goes off on a lark to get out of the fuss, and 
the woman who names her firstborn son for any 
man except his father, may qualify in all the avail- 
able moral tenets, but they certainly have slipped 
up somehow,- mentally, in the Real Meaning of 
things. Thank God,” he finished quickly, “ that 
neither Harold Lennart nor Mary has failed the 
other like that — no matter what else happens.” 
His face whitened. “ I stayed with Harold Len- 
nart the night little Harold was born,” he whis- 
pered rather softly. 

Before I could think of just the right thing to 
say, he jumped up awkwardly and strode over to 
the looking-glass, and puffed out his great chest 
and stood and stared at himself. 

“ I wish I had a son named Bertus Sagner,” he 
said. 

“ It ’s all right, of course, to have him named 
after you,” I laughed, “ but you surely would n’t 
choose to have him look like you, would you ? ” 

He turned on me with absurd fierceness. “ I 
would n’t marry any woman who did n’t love me 
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enough to want her son to look like me!” he ex- 
claimed. 

I was still laughing as I picked up my hat. I 
was still laughing as I stumbled and fumbled down 
the long, black, steep stairs. Half an hour later in 
my pillows I was still laughing. But I did not get 
to sleep. My mind was too messy. After all, 
when you really come to think of it, a man’s brain 
ought to be made up fresh and clean every night 
like a hotel bed. Sleep seems to be altogether too 
dainty a thing to nest in any brain that strange 
thoughts have rumpled. Always there must be the 
white sheet of peace edging the blanket of forget- 
fulness. And perhaps on one or two of life’s 
wintrier nights some sort of spiritual comforter 
thrown over all. 

It was almost a week before I saw any of the 
Lennarts again. Then, on a Saturday afternoon, 
as Sagner and I were lolling along the road toward 
town we met Lennart and “ Little Sister ” togged 
out in a lot of gorgeous golf duds. Lennart was 
delighted to see us, and “ Little Sister ” made Sag- 
ner get down on his knees and tie her shoe lacings 
twice. I escaped with the milder favor of a pat on 
the wrist. 

“We’re going out to the Golf Club,” beamed 
Lennart, “ to enter for the tournament.” 

“ Oh,” said Sagner, turning to join them. 
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“ Shall we find Mrs. Lennart out at the club ? Is 
she going to play ? ” 

A flicker of annoyance went over Lennart’s face. 
“ Why, Sagner,” he said, “ how stupid you are ! 
Don’t you know that Mary is lame and couldn’t 
walk over the golf course now to save her life? ” 

As Sagner turned back to me, and we passed on 
out of hearing, I noted two red spots flaming hec- 
tically in his cheeks. 

“ It seems to me,” he muttered, “ that if I had 
crippled or incapacitated my wife in any way so 
that she could n’t play golf any more, I would n’t 
exactly take another woman into the tournament. 
I think that singles would just about fit me under 
the circumstances.” 

“ But Lennart is such a ‘ splendid fellow,’ ” I 
quoted wryly. 

“ He ’s a splendid fool,” snapped Sagner. 

“ Why, you darned old copy-cat,” I taunted. 
“ It was Miss Hubert who rated him as a ‘ splendid 
fool.’ ” 

“ Oh,” said Sagner. 

“ Oh, yourself,” said I. 

Involuntarily we turned and watched the two 
bright figures skirting the field. Almost at that 
instant they stopped, and the girl reached up with 
all her clinging, cloying coquetry and fastened a 
great, pink wild rose into the lapel of the man’s 

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coat. Sagner groaned. “ Why can’t she keep her 
hands off that man ? ” he muttered ; then he 
shrugged his shoulders with a grim little gesture of 
helplessness. “ If a girl does n’t know,” he said, 
“ that it ’s wrong to chase another woman’s man 
she ’s too ignorant to be congenial. If she does 
know it ’s wrong, she ’s too — vicious. But never 
mind,” he finished abruptly, “ Lennart’s foolishness 
will soon pass. And meanwhile Mary has her boy. 
Surely no lad was ever so passionately devoted to 
his mother. They are absolutely inseparable. I 
never saw anything like it.” He began to smile 
again. 

Then, because at a turn of the road he saw a 
bird that reminded him of a beast that reminded 
him of a reptile, he left me unceremoniously and 
went back to the laboratory. 

Feeling a bit raw over his desertion, I gave up 
my walk and decided to spend the rest of the after- 
noon at the library. 

At the edge of the reading-room I found Madge 
Hubert brandishing a ferocious-looking paper-knife 
over the perfectly helpless new magazines. With 
a little cry of delight she summoned me to her by 
the wave of a Science Monthly. Looking over her 
shoulder I beheld with equal delight that the canny 
old Science paper had stuck in Sagner’s great, ugly 
face for a frontispiece. At arm’s length, with 
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opening and narrowing eyes, I studied the perfect, 
clever likeness: the convict-cropped hair; the surly, 
aggressive, relentlessly busy features; the absurd, 
overwrought, deep-sea sort of eyes. “ Great 
Heavens, Miss Hubert,” I said, “ did you ever see 
such a funny-looking man ? ” 

The girl winced. “Funny?” she gasped. 
“ Funny ? Why, I think Bertus Sagner is the most 
absolutely fascinating-looking man that I ever saw 
in my life.” She stared at me in astonishment. 

To hide my emotions I fled to the history room. 
Somewhat to my surprise Mrs. Lennart and her 
little lad were there, delving deep into some thrill- 
ing grammar-school problem concerning Henry the 
Eighth. I nodded to them, thought they saw me, 
and slipped into a chair not far behind them. There 
was no one else in the room. Maybe my thirst for 
historical information was not very keen. Cer- 
tainly every book that I touched rustled like a dead, 
stale autumn leaf. Maybe the yellow bird in the 
acacia tree just outside the window teased me a lit- 
tle bit. Anyway, my eyes began only too soon to 
stray from the text-books before me to the little 
fluttering wisp of Mrs. Lennart’s hair that tickled 
now and then across the lad’s hovering face. I 
thought I had never seen a sweeter picture than 
those two cuddling, browsing faces. Surely I had 
never seen one more entrancingly serene. 

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Then suddenly I saw the lad push back his books 
with a whimper of discontent. 

“ What is it ? ” asked his mother. I could hear 
her words plainly. 

“ Oh, I wish I had a sister,” fretted the boy. 

“ Why? ” said the mother in perfectly happy sur- 
prise. 

The lad began to drum on the table. “ Why do 
I want a sister ? ” he repeated a trifle temperishly. 
“ Why, so I could have some one to play with and 
walk with and talk with and study with. Some one 
jolly and merry and frisky.” 

“ Why — what about me? ” she quizzed. Even 
at that moment I felt reasonably certain that she 
was still smiling. 

The little lad looked bluntly up into her face. 
“ Why you are — so old !” he said quite distinctly. 

I saw the woman’s shoulders hunch as though 
her hands were bracing against the table. Then 
she reached out like a flash and clutched the little 
lad’s chin in her fingers. If a voice-tone has any 
color, hers was corpse-white. “ I never — let — 
you — know — that — you — were — too — 
young l” she almost hissed. 

And I shut my eyes. 

When I looked up again the woman was gone, 
and the little lad was running after her with a 
queer, puzzled look on his face. 

364 


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mm 




4 ‘Oh, 1 wish I had a sister,” fretted the boy 






WOMAN’S ONLY BUSINESS 


Life has such a strange way of foreshortening 
its longest plots with a startling, snapped-off end- 
ing. Any true story is a tiny bit out of rhetorical 
proportion. 

The very next day, under the railroad trestle that 
hurries us back and forth to the big, neighboring 
city, we found Mrs. Lennart’s body in a three- foot 
pool of creek water. It was the little lad’s birth- 
day, it seems, and he was to have had a supper 
party, and she had gone to town in the early after- 
noon to make a few festive purchases. A package 
of tinsel-paper bonbons floated safely, I remember, 
in the pool beside her. For some inexplainable 
reason she had stepped off the train at the wrong 
station and, realizing presumably how her blunder- 
ing tardiness would blight the little lad’s pleasure, 
she had started to walk home across the trestle, 
hoping thereby to beat the later train by as much 
as half an hour. The rest of the tragedy was 
brutally plain. Somehow between one safe, 
friendly embankment and another she had slipped 
and fallen. The trestle was ticklish walking for 
even a person who was n’t lame. 

Like a slim, white, waxen altar candle snuffed 
out by a child’s accidental, gusty pleasure-laugh, we 
brought her home to the sweet, green, peaceful li- 
brary, with its resolute, indomitable hearthstone. 

Out of all the crowding people who jostled me in 

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the hallway I remember only — Lennart’s ghastly, 
agonized face. 

“ Go and tell Sagner,” he said. 

Even as I crossed the campus the little, fluttery, 
flickery, hissing word “ suicide ” was in the air. 
From the graduates’ dormitory I heard a man’s 
voice argue, “ But why did she get off deliberately 
at the wrong station?” Out of the president’s 
kitchen a shrill tone cackled, “ Well, she ain’t been 
herself, they say, for a good many weeks. And 
who wonders ? ” 

In one corner of the laboratory, close by an open 
window, I found Sagner working, as I had ex- 
pected, in blissful ignorance. 

“ What ’s the matter? ” he asked bluntly. 

I was very awkward. I was very clumsy. I 
was very frightened. My face was all condensed 
like a telegram. 

“ Madge Hubert was right,” I stammered. 
“ Mrs. Lennart’s — business — has gone into the 
hands of a — receiver.” 

The glass test tube went brittling out of Sag- 
ner’s fingers. “ Do you mean that she is — dead ? ” 
he asked. 

I nodded. 

For the fraction of a moment he rolled back his 
great, shaggy brows, and lifted his face up wide- 
eyed and staring to the soft, sweet, dove-colored, 
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early evening sky. Then his eyelids came scrunch- 
ing down again perfectly tight, and I saw one side 
of his ugly mouth begin to smile a little as a man 
might smile — as he closes the door — when the 
woman whom he loves comes home again. Then 
very slowly, very methodically, he turned off all 
the gas-burners and picked up all the notebooks, 
and cleansed all the knives, and just as I thought 
he was almost ready to go with me he started back 
again and released a fair, froth-green lunar moth 
from a stifling glass jar. Then, with his arm across 
my cringing shoulders, we fumbled our way down 
the long, creaky stairs. And all the time his heart 
was pounding like an oil-soused engine. But I had 
to bend my head to hear the questions that crumbled 
from his lips. 

As we crunched our way across the Lennarts’ 
garden with all the horrible, rackety noise that the 
living inevitably make in the presence of the dead, 
we ran into Lennart’s old gardener crouching there 
in the dusk, stuffing cold, white roses into a huge 
market basket. Almost brutally Sagner clutched 
the old fellow by the arm. “ Dunstan,” he de- 
manded, “ how — did — this — thing — happen ? ” 

The old gardener shook with fear and palsy. 
“ There ’s some,” he whispered, “ as says the lady- 
dear was out of her mind. A-h, no,” he protested, 
“ a-h, no. She may ha’ been out of her heart, but 

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she were n’t never out of her mind. There 9 s 
some,” he choked, “ as calls it suicide, there ’s 
some,” he gulped, “ as calls it accident. I ’m a 
rough-spoke man and I don’ know the tongue o’ 
ladies, but it were n’t suicide, and it were n’t acci- 
dent. If it had be’n a man that had done it, you ’d 
’a’ called it just a ‘ did n’t-give-a-damn.’ ” 

As we neared the house Sagner spoke only once. 
“ Barney,” he asked quite cheerfully, “ were you 
ever rude to a woman? ” 

My hands went instinctively up to my head. 
“ Oh, yes,” I hurried, “ once in the Arizona desert 
I struck an Indian squaw.” 

“ Does it hurt? ” persisted Sagner. 

“ You mean ‘Did it hurt?’” I answered a bit 
impatiently. “ Yes, I think it hurt her a little, but 
not nearly as much as she deserved.” 

Sagner reached forward and yanked me back 
by the shoulder. “ I mean,” he growled, “ do you 
remember it now in the middle of the night, and 
are you sorry you did it ? ” 

My heart cramped. “ Yes,” I acknowledged, 
“ I remember it now in the middle of the night. 
But I am distinctly not sorry that I did it.” 

“ Oh,” muttered Sagner. 

With the first creaking sound of our steps in the 
front hall “ Little Sister ” came gliding down the 
stairway with the stark-faced laddie clutching close 
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at her sash. All the sparkle and spangle were gone 
from the girl. Her eyes were like two bruises on 
the flesh of a calla lily. Slipping one ice-cold 
tremulous hand into mine she closed down her other 
frightened hand over the two. “ I ’m so very glad 
you ’ve come,” she whispered huskily. “ Mr. Len- 
nart is n’t any comfort to me at all to-night — and 
Mary was the only sister I had.” Her voice caught 
suddenly with a rasping sob. “ You and Mr. Sag- 
ner have always been so kind to me,” she plunged 
on blindly, with soft-drooping eyelids, “ and I shall 
probably never see either of you again. We are all 
going home to-morrow. And I expect to be mar- 
ried in July to a boy at home.” Her icy fingers 
quickened in mine like the bloom-burst of a sun- 
scorched Jacqueminot. 

“ You — expect — to — be — married — in — 
July to — a — boy — at — home ? ” cried Sagner. 

The awful slicing quality in his voice brought 
Lennart’s dreadful face peering out through a slit 
in the library curtains. 

“ Hush ! ” I signaled warningly to Sagner. But 
again his venomous question ripped through the 
quiet of the house. 

“ You — expected — all — the — time — to — 
be — married — in — July ? ” 

“ Why, yes,” said the girl, with the faintest dim- 
pling flicker of a smile. “ Won’t you congratulate 
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me?” Very softly she drew her right hand away 
from me and held it out whitely to Sagner. 

“ Excuse me,” said Sagner, “ but I have just 

— washed — my — hands.” 

“What?” stammered the girl. “W-h-a-t?” 

“Excuse — me,” said Sagner, “but I have just 

— washed my hands.” 

Then, bowing very, very low, like a small boy at 
his first dancing-school, Sagner passed from the 
house. 

When I finally succeeded in steering my shaking 
knees and flopping feet down the long front steps 
and the pleasant, rose-bordered path, I found Sag- 
ner waiting for me at the gateway. Under the 
basking warmth of that mild May night his teeth 
were chattering as with an ague, and his ravenous 
face was like the face of a man whose soul is ut- 
terly glutted, but whose body has never even so 
much as tasted food and drink. 

I put both my hands on his shoulders. “ Sag- 
ner,” I begged, “ if there is anything under God’s 
heaven that you want to-night — go and get it ! ” 

He gave a short, gaspy laugh and wrenched hini- 
self free from me. “ There is nothing under 
God’s heaven — to-night — that I want — except 
Madge Hubert,” he said. 

In another instant he was gone. With a wh-i-r 
and a wh-i-s-h and a snow-white fragrance, his trail 
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cut abruptly through the apple-bush hedge. Then 
like a huge, black, sweet-scented sponge the darken- 
ing night seemed to swoop down and wipe him right 
off the face of the earth. 

Very softly I knelt and pressed my ear to the 
ground. Across the young, tremulous, vibrant 
greensward I heard the throb-throb-throb of a 
man’s feet — running. 


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